At 3,000 m above sea stage, the Ladakh winter is harsh with the temperature dipping to nearly minus 30 levels Celsius. Whereas life involves a frozen halt elsewhere, it’s playtime for scores of younger girls ice-hockey gamers on the nation’s highest plateau. The 2-and-a-half months of brutal winter supplies them a chance to chase their desires. So, they gear up and head to the closest frozen lake to play.
“Ice hockey is a lifestyle for us,” says Noor Jahan, 33, the India crew goalkeeper. She is the face of the crew that may compete within the Asia-Oceania Championships in Thailand this month. Eighteen of the 20 within the crew are from Ladakh.
The eight-team competitors additionally options Iran, Kyrgyz Republic, Kuwait, Malaysia, Singapore, the UAE and Thailand. With simply three wins in 13 internationals, India’s purpose is to get publicity.
“We’re actually trying ahead to this chance. This occasion is being held after three years attributable to Covid, so we’re actually excited,” Jahan, who has been within the nationwide crew since 2016, says. “Regardless of the time misplaced to Covid, girls’s ice hockey has actually grown in Ladakh. Earlier, we had hassle getting 20 ladies, however now there isn’t a dearth of curiosity.”
Six groups took half within the nationals held earlier within the 12 months, together with Maharashtra, Haryana and Telangana although Ladakh dominated.
“Ice hockey has been widespread in our components for a minimum of 40 years, nevertheless it took some time for ladies to take up the game,” says Jahan, who was launched to the game 20 years in the past by her cousin, who performed within the nationwide males’s crew.
“I used to look at him play, and since I had no gear, I might steal his skates and hockey stick and play. At some point he obtained fed up and gave me a pair of handmade military skates.”
Jahan’s early classes got here from watching the lads’s native matches. Regularly extra ladies had been drawn to ice hockey. “Initially, nobody paid consideration to us. There was no correct rink in Ladakh anyway, and no matter appropriate pure ice we had was utilized by the lads’s groups. The women would get the area within the afternoons or evenings when the ice was in a really dangerous situation.”
Acknowledgment got here from surprising quarters. “International travellers, particularly from USA and Canada, started to note us and began donating their gear. Ours is an costly sport and it isn’t doable for our households to help us financially. A regular ice-hockey gear prices between ₹2-3 lakh.”
Enjoying with sub-standard gear will be hazardous. In a match towards Thailand, Jahan’s worn-out glove tore, exposing her fingers. “I realised solely after the puck struck and I felt the ache. I might say now we have come a great distance from there.”
Ladakh now has round 30-40 ice hockey golf equipment, together with the Ladakh Ladies’s Ice Hockey Membership, of which Jahan is a normal secretary. She can be government council member of the Ice Hockey Affiliation of India and heads its girls’s improvement wing.
Jahan can be an artwork conservationist with a PhD within the topic from Nationwide Museum Institute. She is a co-founder of Shesrig Ladakh, an artwork conservation atelier. She works primarily with Thangka, wall, scroll and mural work.
“For nine-and-a-half months, I restore work and dream of taking part in. For the remaining two-and-a-half months, I stay my dream.”