Question:

What are Indian coastal plains?

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u can also answer the western coast? and also the rivers situated with it.

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  1. I guess Southern India since Northern India is the Himalayas


  2. the konkan,coromandal(west), Malabar coast,and the northern circars(east).

  3. India is broadly 2 triangles placed back to back with longest side of them common, aligned with the Tropic of Cancer. The top triangle is the Indo-Gangetic plains, Thar desert and Eastern Ganga-Brahmaputra delta & margins. Southern triangle is the Deccan (Dakshin) plateau and central highlands.

    Deccan is fringed with coastal plains - East (Bay of Bengal) & West (Arabian Sea). As the prevailing lay of Deccan is from west to east the loftiest heights are at the west edge. Here they are close to the shore (average 40 miles wide) and in monsoon (South West monsoon) cause heavy rains on this strip of coastal plains and swift flowing short rivers. Even the sea has steeper gradient in continental shelf. East coast contrarily, has broader widths of 120 miles at places. All major, medium rivers of Deccan - many originating from the western extreme of western ghats flow across Deccan and form broad, large deltas. Mahandi delta is the largest of Deccan rivers, followed by Godavari, Kaveri and Krishna rivers. Rivers originating locally on Eastern ghats have only estuaries, perhaps because their river-loads are meagre. prominent amongst them is 'Penna'.

    Western ghats are like an unbroken lofty wall with a major broad gap at Palaghat just after the Eastern ghats join them at Nilagiri hills. Beyond that to the south till the land's end at Kanya kumari they are known as 'Cardomam' hills; between this and East coast is the broad plain of Tamilnadu in its rain shadow. It has an eastern spur called 'Palni' hills. Tamil coast on the main Bay (of Bengal) extending along to the mouth of Krishna river delta where the coast abruptly changes from the N-S alignment with a strike to the NE, is called 'Coromandal' coast. North of which is called 'Circars' coast as these districts were called Northen Circars. Near Visakhapatnam where no major river joins the sea, the Eastern ghats come close and plunge into the sea as the hill 'Dolphin's nose' in Visakhapatnam city. The sea floor also is steeper and the reason why there is a good harbour (port) here.

    Tamilnadu gets more rain in the monsoon rebound called the 'North East' monsoon. West of cardomam hills is the Malabar (Kerala state) coast broader than in Konkan coast in north with the heaviest monsoon (North West) rain.

    Eastern ghats is the eastern margin of Deccan that falls off to the eastern coastal plains. Big  rivers - Mahanadi, Godavari, krishna & Kaveri created wide gaps. The hills are not in one line but with twists. Only at 2 places they exceed 5000' height, still  harbouring thick forests, like the Nallamala forests (in hills of the same name) which is the only place on earth to have the valuable 'Red sanders' trees. Rainfall is good though less than West coast. The shore also has very gentle slope into the sea where the sediments deposited by the rivers formed lagoons, bars & spits. As it is a broad plain with water from  rivers, that were dammed with a maze of canals, agriculture is main avocation in the east.

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