Keibul Lamjao National Park

The world's only floating national park — last refuge of the sangai deer

Keibul Lamjao, on the southern fringe of Loktak Lake about ten kilometres from Moirang, is the only floating national park in the world. The park occupies about 40 square kilometres of phumdi — a peat-like raft of decaying vegetation that floats on the lake's surface and is solid enough in places to support deer, wild boar, and even a small herd of buffalo. The phumdi rises and falls with the lake; in the dry season parts touch bottom, in the wet season the whole mass lifts free.

The park is the last refuge of the sangai (Rucervus eldii eldii), the brow-antlered "dancing deer" of Manipur, of which only a few hundred animals remain. The visitor centre is at Pabot on the southern edge; from there a boat or a guided walk on the phumdi gives a chance of sightings. Best months are November to April, when the water is lower and the animals concentrate in smaller areas. Foreign visitors should arrange permits in advance; conditions on the phumdi are unpredictable.

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A story
By the early 1950s the sangai — Manipur's "dancing deer" — was thought to be extinct. A small surviving population was rediscovered on the floating phumdis of Keibul Lamjao in 1953 and the area was made a sanctuary in 1966 and a national park in 1977. Without the strange spongy meadows, which behave both like islands and like rafts, the species would not exist today.