In the days of yore, Manipur kings gifted salt cakes made in Ningel as a mark of their appreciation, but now just 10 families of the village are tenuously holding on to the dying art to eke out a meagre living.

The cakes, which are circular discs of salt manufactured by boiling saline water from wells, have yielded their pride of place to the ubiquitous modern-day packaged salt. The use of the salt cakes is now confined to religious functions related to mainly births and weddings.