Hockey Night in the Himalayas - Day 2.5 to 3

(...continued)

I forgot to talk about the rest of Day Two:

After the hockey and getting cleaned up at the guest house, we headed to Castle Tsemo. It was closed to the public in the winter, due to the lack of tourists, so we didn't go inside, but the views from the outside were spectacular.

A hill facing the castle. Love those colourful Tibetan prayer flags.


Patrice, our photographer, trying to get the perfect shot.



A view of the city of Leh from the hill.


Looking at the castle from the hill. Even though the walk to the hill doesn't look very steep, I was still totally scared of tumbling down the hill, but I forced myself to go anyway. I know - I'm a wuss.

The sign says it all.


Me standing beside the sign (not visible).

The bus left us so that we could walk down from the castle to get back into town. We had to traverse a maze of passages through people's backyards before we reached the centre of town.


The winding path we followed to walk down from the castle.


The backyards we walked through to get to the centre of town.

Before going for hockey, Sandy, Art, Ben and I decided to climb up to see a stupa (I think this means buddhist monastery) right next to our guesthouse. We woke up with so much energy thinking that we were more or less acclimatised to the high altitude, but after my first ten steps, I had to stop because my heart was beating so fast. So panting all the way up, we slowly climbed up the steps taking frequent breaks to admire the scenery. Art and Ben decided to head back half-way up because they didn't want to tire themselves before the game.




The stupa.


Wow, what a view! One of the few tourists we met was admiring the scenery from the top of the climb.

Day 3 was a bit cooler, and we again headed to the rink for an 11:30am match. This would be the test, the Indian Champion Army team was itching to play us and many fans somehow made it to the rink to catch the action. Word of the Canadian powerhouse had spread and people came to see the match with the team that beat the Canadians the past two years. We asked for the rink to be swept before our match, and the Zamboni brothers did a great job clearing the ice.

Shane getting in on the action.


Phil showing 'em how it's done.

The temperature was a bit cooler and the ice harder, it would be a fast game. The army team was pumped but so were we, and we had a relatively easy time running up the score on them over 2 periods. After a short break we then took on the best club team, Rimo. Again over 2 periods we had an easy time, with the game challenge turning into how to get 10 year old Austin a goal. He parked himself in front of their net perfectly and had several good chances, but his one timers did not catch mesh.

Cynthia and two of her colleagues. Cynthia is an American, who has done her higher studies in Canada and would switch nationalities if she met the residency requirements. She came to this region to do research for her graduate project and fell in love with the place. She's been living in the Himalayas for the last 10 years at least. She started an NGO, Health Inc., in 1992 to facilitate grass roots initiatives in health, nutrition and education in remote villages throughout the Ladakh region of the Himalaya. She'll walk on foot over ice and snow for three days just to get to a village that is inaccessible by road! Her two colleagues played on our team - though they weren't too stable on their skates, they made a valiant effort!


Everyone's interested in watching the hockey, including some army guys and a couple of buddhist monks.


More spectators


The announcer with his sophisticated PA system.


The chai/Maggi noodles tent


Buddhist monk/first aider/ambulance driver

Afterwards we again turned to working with the locals, coaching, playing, and giving tips as we have done in past years.

Women's hockey on a rink next to ours


The Ladakhi Winter Sports Club is also trying to develop speed skaters.

We headed back to the hotel undefeated, and could sense a bit of surprise in the Ladakhi's who for the past two years had stolen a few ties and wins against the Canadians. At the banquet that evening we had the usual speeches, drinking, dancing and fun, and tried to assure the locals they had not taken a step backwards as the scores showed but that we had a powerhouse team this year. The
washed up 40 year olds of the past were being replaced with Junior and College players as word of hockey in Ladakh spread. The highlight of the evening was when the Region's Chief Councilor announced the government will be donating land to the Winter Sport Club to build a permanent rink, something they had hoped for the past several years. The banquet ended with many new friendships developed, and cheers of joy from the Ladakhi's as snow began to fall and the Canadians may have to
stay another day!

The musicians at the banquet


The same set of dancers came out and gave us demonstrations of various different traditional Ladakhi dances with a change of costume each time. Most of the dances were slow-paced due to the lack of oxygen at high altitudes.


In this dance, the men had to balance a pot of water on their heads. The climax of the dance came when they had to run in circles faster and faster without spilling any water.


Various presentations were made from both sides. The Ladakhis presented us all with white prayer scarves as well as a gift of yak socks and a Ladakhi Winter Sports Club pin which is now displayed proudly on my jacket lapel.


Art read out a letter from the mayor of his town, Grand Forks, stating how honoured the town was to have three representatives participating in the tournament. There has since been talk of making Leh and Grand Forks sister cities.


After the presentations and some more dancing, we were invited to stand up and dance as well. It was fun, but would have been a lot more fun if we weren't all reeling from oxygen deprivation. They had outdoor gas heaters operating indoors at full power. It was the first time during the trip that I felt really warm, but I think I would have preferred the oxygen. They were just giant airsucking devices. I felt really sick by the end of the night, the worst I've felt in a long time. Faint, nauseous, loss of appetite. The works. But luckily, I started to feel better after I got some food in me and breathed in some fresh (but cold) air.

Backtracking a bit: That afternoon, the "Howe family" and I went to visit a functioning buddhist monastery.




Inside, we made a contribution and lit a candle. We walked around and when we went back to the candle again, it had gone out, showing just how little air was in there - scary! That was not the only incidence of lack of oxygen that we experienced on the trip.



Buddha


Buddhist monks chanting while playing simple instruments and sipping chai. What a great experience to see a real functioning monastery in action.


YOu see these wall hangings on sale everywhere in Dharamsala. It was neat to see them displayed in the monastery.


Look at how long those horns are!


Monks and monklings. How do kids end up living in a monastery anyway considering that monks are celibate? Maybe they were orphans? When Paul was showing them his digital photos, he accidentally flipped onto some of the hockey ones and the monk boys' faces lit up as they exclaimed, "Hockey!!"