The small Mainimati Museum, adjacent to Salban Vihara, is worth a diversion. The collection includes terracotta plaques, bronze statues, 4th-century silver and gold coins, jewellery, kitchen utensils and votive stupas embossed with Buddhist inscriptions. The marvellous terracotta plaques reveal a rural Buddhist art alive with animation and vivid natural realism.
Also on display is an unusually large bronze bell from one of the Buddhist temples and some 1000-year-old large, well-preserved black-stone carvings of Hindu gods and goddesses, including Vishnu, Ganesh and Parvati.
