The ‘Queen of Hills’ Ooty celebrates its bicentenary – Atulya Yatra

On January 8, 1819, sitting in the Dimbatti Valley, Coimbatore Collector John Sullivan wrote to Sir Thomas Munro, then Governor of Madras: “My dear Colonel, I have been in the Highlands for the past week. It’s the best country… It’s more like Switzerland than anywhere else in Europe… It freezes here every night, this morning we found snow in our water chatties (clay pots).

It has been two centuries since this expedition of colonial explorers led by John Sullivan went into the Nilgiri Hills. As the Nilgiris celebrate the bicentenary of this discovery, heritage lovers, ecologists and locals are uniting to celebrate the legacy of the ‘Blue Mountains’.

ancient past

“Ootacamund, the first hill station of the British Raj, officially came into existence on June 1, 1823, when Stonehouse, the first modern building on the hills, was inaugurated,” says Venugopal Dharmalingam, Honorary Director, Nilgiri Documentation Center (NDC). The idea of ​​bicentenary celebrations came up.

Stone House Built by John Sullivan | Photo credit: M. Satyamurthy

Established as a public trust in 2006, the NDC has painstakingly collected and published a huge amount of documentation about the hills. John Sullivan, collector of Coimbatore, then part of the Nilgiris, first saw Ootacamund in 1821, bought about 100 acres from the local Todas of Hotegamund and started construction of a stone house in 1822.

Also Read: Observing Sullivan 200 years after his arrival in the Nilgiris

Currently functioning as a government arts college, Stonehouse has played a vital role in the development of the hill station for two centuries.

John Sullivan | Photo credit: Special Arrangement

Sullivan saw the mountains as a health resort. To promote his plan for a sanatorium for sick European troops in India, he lost no time in making the hills habitable by laying roads, building houses, planting English vegetables, trees and flowers. He dammed the waters into a series of reservoirs for irrigation and navigation up to the east coast, a distance of more than 200 km. Due to paucity of funds the plan could not go beyond the first reservoir and the town was blessed with a well-decorated lake, which later became a major tourist attraction. “Work on the lake began in January 1823 and was completed by June-July 1825, personally supervised by Sullivan and carried out by tank diggers from Vellore,” explains Venugopal.

Club Concierge founder Dipali Sikand, who now runs MindEscapes in Ketti, a creative retreat, points out that the Nilgiris have always been a hotspot for innovation. She said, “Where was the game of snooker invented? Which hills welcomed the visits of Nikita Khrushchev, Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Edward Lear? Where did Maria Montessori, Madame Blavatsky and the Viceroy of India like to take their holidays? Where do tigers, buffaloes and elephants still roam? Where were the experiments for wheat that brought about the green revolution? – Answer Nilgiri Hills in South India. The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve is India’s first biosphere reserve with a fascinating ecosystem of more than 5,000 square kilometers, thousands of flowering plants and 100 species of mammals, 350 species of birds, 80 species of reptiles. , its fauna includes around 39 species of fish, 31 amphibians and 316 species of butterflies.

Dipali says that Tennyson (though never there) wrote about the ‘sweet, half-English air of the Nelligeries’, and over the past two centuries it has been enjoyed by thousands, including kings, tourists, scholars, soldiers and missionaries. Beginning with the Maharaja of Mysore in the 1860s, a steady stream of royal statesmen from Baroda, Jodhpur, Hyderabad and Coochbehar built their summer residences in the town. Aranmore, an extravagant palace-bungalow spread over 36 acres, built by Maharaja Hanwant Singh of Jodhpur as a summer retreat, is now a government guest house, known as Tamilagam.

“It was in this small area that Jules Jansen took the first photograph of a solar eclipse (1871). “As home to more than a dozen tribal groups – Kotas, Todas, Badagas, Paniyas, Nayaks, Irulas and six tribes of Kurumbas – Deepali explains, the place is a social treasure trove for anthropologists. own distinctive Dravidian language.

In flat races | Photo credit: Special Arrangement

The vast grasslands of the Wenlock Downs became a favorite recreational spot for Europeans. Golf, a steeple chase, point-to-point races, meetings, picnics and a cross-country run for stalwart local Todas add to the annual event’s popularity. A 24-year-old Winston Churchill had his first political ambition in 1898 while riding on the Downs. In July 2005, UNESCO added the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a 1,000 mm meter gauge railway in Tamil Nadu, India, built by the British in 1908. This railway is operated by Southern Railway and is the only rack railway in India. The railway relies on its steam locomotives.

An unstable balance

However, within 200 years, the balance of the entire ecosystem has reached a tipping point. “There is a systematic draining of the landscape, once a refuge for nature, plant ecology and human cultures that lived sustainably. Some unique ecosystems and interconnected livelihoods have been wiped out. The solution lies in healing nature,” says restoration ecologist Godwin Vasant Bosco. He lives in the Nilgiris. He restores native grasslands throughout, helping not only native forests but also the wildlife that depends on them.

Older residents recall the glorious, golden days. K Natarajan, 74, president of the Heritage Steam Chariot Trust, which documents the history of the iconic Nilgiri Mountain Rail, recalls how the train that ran along served to announce lunch breaks to workers on the tea estates. “At the age of 10, I was entrusted with the task of spotting a train. In the evening, when the noise is heard, the workers prepare to leave for home. The train carried horses, vegetables, tea and heavy machinery from Canada for the Kunda hydroelectric project. There were no bus stands or autorickshaws, we walked.

Wenlock Downs | Photo credit: Center for Special Arrangements

Echoing this statement was D Radhakrishnan, a senior journalist and Honorary Secretary of Assembly Rooms, the oldest cinema hall in Nilgiris, Udhagamandalam. “For a long time it was described as a quaint little hill station, a place where time stood still, and the locals took great pride in old world manners and hospitality. With the rapid development of the town and the erosion of such unique values, it’s hard for an old-timer like me to come to terms,” ​​he says. .

As the hill station entered its third century, many raised their voice against unwanted changes in the natural environment through campaigns like Save Nilgiris. “The campaign eventually formed the NDC to create awareness and take action to protect and preserve the Nilgiris,” says Venugopal, “I was born when independent Ooty was five years old. There are still a few Europeans and a significant number of Anglo-Indians. The ‘Morning Boys’, the older European residents They greeted us as we passed them walking their dogs and we just nodded.

Police Beat | Photo credit: Special Arrangement

It is also the time when everyone walks regardless of distance. English cottages and bungalows stand out amidst their charming gardens and orchards. Venugopal said, “There were forests everywhere. We roam from dawn to dusk without any fear. Wild fruits abound. As kids we really believed that we would never leave Ooty.