Statue of Meidingu Nara Singh

Manipur State Museum

Natural history, ethnology and archaeology fill the galleries of the state museum in Imphal, and it is the sort of collection that gives you a frame for everything else you will look at afterwards. The ethnology rooms are the reason to come: the peoples of the state gathered in one building, which is otherwise hard to get at on a short visit. Do it early in a trip rather than at the end, because it works far better as preparation than as a summing-up.