The Chambri Lakes are a great inland delta that opens off the Sepik south of the main river, fed by seasonal floodwaters. In the dry months the lakes shrink back to ponds and channels; in the wet season they spread for tens of kilometres, and the villages — Aibom, Chambri, Indingai — sit on small dry mounds or float on rafts of vegetation.
The Chambri people are best known for their mask-carving, particularly the long, narrow ancestor masks called yipwon, and for pottery from the clay-rich shore at Aibom. The lakes are also famous as a fishing ground — barramundi, catfish, and the introduced tilapia that has reshaped the local diet over the last fifty years. A Sepik trip that does not include a couple of nights in the Chambri Lakes is missing one of the strangest landscapes anywhere in the Pacific.