Why it looks like this

The Western Ghats run like a wall down India's west coast, and the Palghat Gap is the one broad opening in it. Coimbatore grew where roads and railways through the gap meet the Tamil plains — trade passed this way between the Kerala coast and the interior for centuries.

The wind that funnels through the gap and the black cotton soils of the plain made the region a cotton country; mills earned the city the name 'Manchester of South India', and industrial estates and engineering works now string along its highways.