Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. Anglo-Ind.) topsy-turvey.

1801		G. Hadley Compendious Grammar 31: Oolta-poolta, topsy-turvey — higgledy-pippledy [sic] [ibid.] 49: Higgledy-piggledy. Oolta-poolta. Oolta signifies turned over. This seems a cant expression.
1841		F.J. Bellew ‘Memoirs of a Griffin’ in Asiatic Jrnl & Mthly Register July 157: I hope you will cut Calcutta, and lose no time in puhonchowing (conveying) yourself up by dawk to join the old pultun (battalion), in which, I am sorry to say, things have been quite ooltapoolta (topsy-turvy) since you left us.
1849		‘Panchkouree Khan’ Revelations of an Orderly 56: One Hakim has a shoukh of turning every thing oolta-poolta?
1852		Surgeon Dartnell ‘The Campaign in the Hills’ in United Services Mag. Oct. 201: A few chairs and tables (left for the next tenant) were scattered oolta-poolta (topsy-turvy) about the room, a log of wood was smoking in the grate.
1865		W.W. Knollys Misses & Matrimony 192: The last time opened my journal , Nelson had just proposed to me , and it was all settled that we were to be married and go off to Oolta Poolta Khan the next day.
1872		Blackwood’s Edinburgh Mag. Aug. 186/2: ‘I shall save the resident Sahib, and turn the plots of the Begum ulta pulta (upside down)’.
1875		Times of India 2 Oct. 2/: What an oolta-poolta kaleidoscope affair is this St. Leger!
1887		Kipling ‘Haunted Subalterns’ in Plain Tales from Hills (1897) 110: ‘I have seen It,’ said the bearer, ‘at night, walking round and round your bed; and that is why everything is ulta-pulta in your room’.
1906		S.J. Duncan Set in Authority (1919) 64: ‘[T]hey are digging by the house of Gobind for the new water-pipes, and the ground is all oolta-poolta there’.
1964		C. Leslie Rope Bridge 127: ‘It’s the fault of being ulta pulta, that’s all. I’m an ulta pulta girl; you’re a bit ulta pulta too’.
1987		R. Frame Sandmouth People 304: [S]he felt she was only agitating herself more, turning her brain – as the expression used to be out east – ‘oolta-poolta’, topsy-turvy.
2009		(ref. to 1907) https://www.cricketnetwork.co.uk 17 Apr. 🌐 EHD Sewell in CB Fry’s magazine dubbed them [i.e. Sth African cricketers] the ‘Oolta-Poolta’ Team, oolta-poolta meaning upside-down in Hindi.