Why Leh has warmed up to ice-hockey

Dorjay Dolma is hurrying up the winding path to Karzoo Dzing. The afternoon sun’s just broken through and despite the single digit daytime temperatures in Leh, sweat forms on her brow. She is late, and grabbing the straps of her backpack close and the folds of her jacket closer, she continues uphill, bumping into you in the process.
"Ice hockey, na?” Despite her rush and no sign indicating a common destination, the slight 22-year-old manages a happy smile.A little out of breath, she rattles on, “Me too. But I am late, no. The match will start soon, and I haven’t even reached the rink. Lekin, mera exam tha na. Abhi O Level practicals finish kiya aur bhaag key aayi…” Before you can say a word, she has disappeared.
Leh in winter is a ghost town. The bent Lama slowly making his way uphill, rosary in hand, wizened features and sad-eyed, and hungry-looking Bhutias sniffing around are the only signs of life. As a cold, dry wind whistles past clumps of Safaeda (Eucalyptus), the dusty, empty streets and general gloominess bear little resemblance to the bustling outpost town that it is during the summers. The local joke, since explosion of tourism to the region a decade and half ago, is that it is in winter that you get to see the real Ladakhi, but then there’s nobody to see him. The same can be said about ice hockey in Leh. Once the ponds in the neighbouring villages freeze over in winter, the locals come out in droves to kick off a short but hard-fought eight-week season, but probably very few outside their circle even get wind of it.
Dorjay’s case is no different. That day, there was a sense of occasion only she seemed aware of. Having raced through her computer institute exams, the goalkeeper was rushing to join her Jammu and Kashmir (Red) teammates for the opening game of the women’s Nationals – a four-team event which included Maharashtra’s girls who clearly looked numbed by the cold — that was squeezed in between the men’s club tournaments and the men’s Nationals that would follow in the second week of February just before the ice begins to melt. Little ponds in and around Leh serve as impromptu ice hockey rinks — the Skara pond in the city or the Gupuks pond outside Leh are popular. Yet, the official action is held over the eight-inch thick frozen surface of the Karzoo Dzing.
An irrigation pond in the summer, the Karzoo at 11,500 feet (3,484 m), is the world’s highest natural ice hockey rink in the world. This novelty serves not only as an attraction but also a handicap for the locals. While ice hockey is an indoor in most parts of the world, in Leh, December-January is the only time that it can be seriously pursued in the region. The absence of an indoor rink means that the locals, who seem to have a natural affinity for the sport, cannot train around the year. The Indian men’s team will play the Asian Challenge Cup in Kuwait, later this month and the only time they have to earn some match practice is with the two or three club tournaments each season. “Once the ice melts, the skates and sticks go back into the bags and they only come out when we are told there is an international tournament to play,” sighs Tundup Namgyal, India’s ice hockey captain. India’s only international victory came in an exhibition game against Macau at Dehra Dun in 2008, and Namgail, a member on the Ladakh Winter Sports Club, the organisation that practically runs ice hockey in the country despite the existence of the Delhi-based Ice Hockey Association of India, also doubles as the referee in the women’s Nationals. This, when he and his LWSC buddies aren’t busy maintaining the Karzoo rink, watering it, sweeping off the ice shavings after each game or cooped up in their winter office in the Forest Reserve Guesthouse while deciding the fixture for the upcoming Nationals.
The lack of international exposure, or even the bleak prospect of a regular nine-month season, does not deter them. “We have a greater stamina due to the rarefied atmosphere of Ladakh, international rivals of our level are scared to play against us. Even then we never play much,” laughs Namgail, but is hopeful that things will change.
Until then, there is a clear idea of the D.I.Y to ice hockey in Ladakh. Dorjay’s captain in the J&K team is Tsewang Chuskit, a tiny, serious-looking 21-year-old who turns out for the Students Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) girl’s team. Talk to Chuskit, and you get the impression that she’s quietly bearing the world’s worries on her little shoulders, but once she hits the ice, she simply explodes into this powerhouse of a hockey player, scoring at will, intelligently opening up play by drawing the puck back into her own half. It is the quality of the SECMOL girl’s game that has moved the organisers to lead the Red’s team, one which chiefly comprises girls from the rival Siachen Angels club.
Tsewang, who hails from the Lalokh region under the Durbur block in in eastern Ladakh, feels there is a greater following for the sport in that region, once the locals had outgrown support from the army who first played ice hockey in the area. Also a National level archer, Tsewang moved from her early days of using sawed off Sintex plastic as blades and branches for hockey sticks to SECMOL – pioneers of women’s ice hockey in Leh — for a more sustained exposure to ice hockey, her first love.
The ice rink at the SECMOL Campus twenty kilometres from Leh, is unique in that it doesn’t require a frozen lake for the sport to be played. Rebecca Norman and husband Sonam Wangchuk, who run the NGO, decided to turn the school’s football field into a sheet of ice in winter by simply watering it down. Still, that doesn’t solve the problem that comes of it being a winter outdoor sport, and this is the least of the problems facing the sport, especially, women’s.
Politicking abounds in the local committee leading to discrimination. There is no women’s representation on the LWSC board despite 34-year-old player Stanzin Dolkar being employed in the state youth sports development department. With the kit costing anywhere between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh, both men and women depend on donations and hand me downs.
Worse is the case of a step-motherly treatment for the girls, who often wait for the boys to finish so that they can borrow their kit. Often the women’s event is squeezed within the men’s tournaments, often as a festival aside. A decade ago, SECMOL had famously protested the omission of the women’s event from the season and since then, the organisers are unfairly wary of their ways. The women may have been grudgingly readmitted, but the discrimination still exists.
With many of the young players hailing from rural and poor background, affording an expensive sport like ice-hockey, especially when played just eight weeks in an year, makes little economic sense. Many parents who are mainly drivers or housewives, still relent and allow their child take to the freeze. They may be walking on thin ice, but in Ladakh, they seem to do it all with an unusual cheeriness.