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Home > Travel Asia > Asia Destinations > Udhagamandalam
Udhagamandalam
India officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second most populous country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world. India is a union of twenty-eight states and seven federally-governed union territories. New Delhi is the capital of India.
Ooty the official name is Udagamandalam, sometimes abbreviated to Udhagai, is a city, a municipality and the district capital of The Nilgiris district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. History of this city is The Nilgiri Hills were part of Hoysala empire under king Vishnuvardhana in the 12th century. It then became part of the Mysore of Tipu Sultan who later surrendered it to the British in the 18th century. The hills were developed rapidly under the British Raj because they were almost entirely owned by private British citizens, unlike the rest of India. Ooty served as the summer capital of the Madras Presidency, and had winding hill roads and a complicated rack railway system built by influential and enterprising British citizens with venture capital from the Madras government.
It is a popular hill station located in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu State, Southern India. The origin of the name Ootacamund is obscure, but mund is the Badaga word for a Toda village, and it is probably a corruption of the Badaga name for the central region of the Nilgiri Plateau. Another likely origin of the stem of the name Ootaca comes from the local language Tamil where Otta-Cal literally means Single Stone. This is perhaps a reference to a sacred stone revered by the local Toda tribespeople. Udagamandalam is a more recent official Tamil name for the town. Ooty stands at an approximate height of 7,440 feet above sea level.
The hill town suffers from rampant commercialization and erosion of natural resources. The tourism industry has placed an enormous strain on the natural resources resulting in pollution, water shortage and bad roads. The landscape is quite unlike the rest of India, marked by rolling hills covered with dense vegetation, smaller hills and plateaus covered with tea gardens, and eucalyptus trees. Many portions of the hills are preserved as natural reserve forests, and special permits are needed to camp in noncamp sites. Ooty is not the destination in itself, as much as it is the focal point of attraction.
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