Ootacamund is a town, a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 and the district capital of the Nilgiris district

The Nilgiris District

The Nilgiris District is in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Nilgiri is also the name given to a range of mountains spread across the states of Tamilnadu as well as Karnataka and Kerala. The Nilgiri Hills are part of a larger mountain chain known as the Western Ghats...

 in the India

India

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 with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n state

States and territories of India

India is a federal union of states comprising twenty-eight states and seven union territories. The states and territories are further subdivided into districts and so on.-List of states and territories:...

 of Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

. Ootacamund is a popular hill station

Hill station

A hill station is a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley. The term was used mostly in colonial Asia , but also in Africa , for towns founded by European colonial rulers as refuges from the summer heat, up where temperatures are cooler...

 located in the Nilgiri Hills. Originally occupied by the Toda

Toda people

The Toda people are a small pastoral community who live on the isolated Nilgiri plateau of Southern India. Before the late 18th century, the Toda coexisted locally with other communities, including the Badaga, Kota, and Kuruba, in a loose caste-like community organization in which the Toda were...

s, the area came under the rule of the East India Company

East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

 at the end of the 18th century. Today the town's economy is based on tourism and agriculture, with manufacturing of medicines and photographic film also present. The town is connected to the rest of India by road and rail, and its historic sites and natural beauty attract tourists.
The origin of the name Udhagamandalam is obscure.