Ooty

Ooty (), officially known as Udhagamandalam (also known as Ootacamund (); abbreviated as Udhagai), is a town and a municipality in the Nilgiris district of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located north west of Coimbatore, 100 km (65 mi) north west of Tirupur, south of Mysore and is the headquarters of the Nilgiris district. It is a popular hill station located in the Nilgiri Hills. It is popularly called the "Queen of Hill Stations". It was the summer capital of the Madras Presidency. Originally occupied by the Badaga and Toda people, the area came under the rule of the East India Company at the end of the 18th century. The economy is based on tourism and agriculture, along with the manufacture of medicines and photographic film. The town is connected by the Nilgiri ghat roads and Nilgiri Mountain Railway. Its natural environment attracts tourists and it is a popular summer destination. In 2011, the town had a population of 88,430. The origin of the name is obscure. The first known written mention of the place is given as Wotokymund in a letter of March 1821 to the Madras Gazette from an unknown correspondent. In early times it was called Ottakal Mandu. The name probably changed under British rule from Udhagamandalam to Ootacamund, and later was shortened to Ooty. The first part of the name (Ootaca) is probably a corruption of the local name for the central region of the Nilgiri Plateau. Otha-Cal is derived from Tamil, meaning "single stone." This is perhaps a reference to a sacred stone revered by the local Toda people. "Mund" is the anglicised form of the Toda word for a village, Mandu. Ooty is in the Nilgiri hills, meaning the "blue mountains", so named due to the Kurunji flower which blooms every twelve years giving the slopes a bluish tinge. Udhagamandalam was originally a tribal land occupied by the Badaga, Toda, Kota, Irula and Kurumba people. The Toda in Nilgiris are first referenced in a record belonging to Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana and his general Punisa, dated 1117 CE.