Forest Walks

The hillsides around Mao are covered in subtropical montane forest, and walking into it even for an hour or two is one of the best things to do here. There are no marked trails in the conventional sense, but local paths connect the town with surrounding villages and ridge points, and several give good views over the Manipur hills.

The birdwatching is excellent, particularly in the early morning hours — the area sits on a convergence zone between Himalayan and Southeast Asian avifaunas, and the species mix is unlike anything in the Indian plains. A field guide and binoculars are worth bringing. The forest is also good for photography: the morning mist that frequently fills the valleys lifts to reveal layered ridgelines that are genuinely beautiful.

things to do sight
A story
The forests around Mao sit in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot — one of the most species-rich regions on earth, and one of the most threatened. The area around Senapati district supports populations of clouded leopard, hoolock gibbon, and numerous endemic bird species found nowhere else. Most visitors see none of these, but the forest itself — dense subtropical montane vegetation at nearly 1,800 metres — is extraordinary to walk through.