Nilgiri Hills

Nilgiri Mountains

The Nilgiri Hills or Nilgiri Mountains is a mountain range in southern India. Theosophical Society founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky wrote about them in Mysterious Tribes of the Blue Hills, also known as the Magicians of the Blue Hills.

According to Geoffrey Hodson, Rishi Agastya was associated with the Nilgiri Hills.

Theosophical Society connections

After the Theosophical Society moved its headquarters from Bombay to Adyar in 1882, staff members frequently spent the hottest summer months in the hills.

Major-General Henry Rhodes Morgan and his wife lived in Ootacamund, and were kind hosts to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott during the summer of 1883. Olcott shared the Morgans' interest in agriculture and the development of new crops. HPB studied the Toda people, and later wrote about the experience.

Elizabeth Preston spent her last years in Kotagiri in the Nilgiri Hills, where she founded the Women's Cooperative, a project to assist native women. She died there on October 8, 1968.

Ootacamund

The most prominent city in the hills is Ootacamund (Udhagamandalam), called "Ooty" by the British raj who flocked there to avoid the summer heat. It served as the summer capital of the Madras Presidency and is still a resort. In Blavatsky's day, the town could be reached by several mountain roads, but it did not have railway access until the 20th century.

Toda people

For hundreds of years the hills were occupied by the Toda people, a Dravidian tribe who raised water buffalo. The population diminished dramatically until only about 2000 remain. Boris de Zirkoff collected photos of the Toda people for use in publishing Blavatsky's writings. Here are a few:

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Additional resources

• Nilgiri Mountains in Wikipedia.