Loktak Lake

Loktak is the largest freshwater lake in northeast India, roughly 290 square kilometres of shallow water in the Manipur valley, and it is covered with phumdis: floating mats of soil, roots and rotting vegetation thick enough to walk on and to build a hut on. Fishing families have cut them into rings, called athaphums, that trap fish and turn the whole surface into a honeycomb when seen from the Sendra hillock at dawn. On the southern rim, Keibul Lamjao is the only floating national park in the world, forty square kilometres of phumdi holding the sangai, Manipur's brow-antlered deer, declared extinct in 1951 and found again two years later; its splayed hooves and rocking gait on the spongy mat gave it the name dancing deer, and only a few hundred survive.

Watchtowers at Pabot and Toyaching give you a chance of a sighting in the first hours of the morning, along with hog deer, otters and wintering waterfowl. The Ithai barrage, built in 1983 for hydropower, raised the water level permanently and has been altering the lake's ecology ever since, an argument still live in Manipur. Moirang on the western shore holds the INA museum, where Colonel Shaukat Malik raised the Azad Hind flag on Indian soil on 14 April 1944, and homestays on Thanga and Karang islands put you out on the water at sunrise.