There are some very apparent cultural differences between Indians and Canadians. Take for instance a conversation I was having a couple weeks back with somebody in our building about an upcoming hockey tournament I was planning to attend. It took close to 5 minutes for us both to realize that we were talking about completely different sports. In India, hockey means field hockey. In Canada, of course, it means hockey, there is no need to put ICE in front of it.

 

India is not a country that I normally associate with hockey given that in Mumbai the temperature today, in the deep of winter, is +29C. There are supposedly a few malls in the city that have ice rinks and we have been on a quest of sorts, but have yet to find any viable ice. I found an article on the web from January 2016 proclaiming the virtues of “One of the Best 5 Malls of Mumbai” which is relatively close to our apartment so we went there for K’s birthday as a surprise. When we got to the mall it looked like the set for a Zombie apocalypse movie. I will have to write another blog post about it sometime, but when I asked about the ice rink I was told that it had been shut down for at least two years. The search continues….

 

So it was with anticipation that last weekend K competed in the Indo-Canadian Friendship Cup, an ice hockey tournament held in the city of Leh, Ladakh. Now I probably should have paid more attention to the geography of our trip, but I always assumed (and should point out that many other people from the High Commission in Delhi had the same assumption) that Ladakh was a state in India. Turns out it is a region in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. If you pay attention to geopolitics I am sure that the name Kashmir will ring a few bells, but the long and short of it is that we were perfectly safe (honest, Mom).

 

The tournament started 17 years ago and the Canadian connection came about after some Indians showed up at the High Commission one day looking for visas to Canada stating that they wanted to go and buy some hockey equipment. The immigration officer handling the case was initially somewhat suspect, but upon further investigation found that people were in fact playing ice hockey up in the northern regions of India on ponds when they froze over for a few months in the winter. Kids were initially playing with whatever equipment they could find; field hockey sticks or curved branches, rocks for pucks, spare cricket equipment, and goalies tied pillows to their legs for protection. Over the years players in the tournament have brought extra equipment to donate and there is a great non-profit organization called The Hockey Foundation (www.hockeyfoundation.org) which sends volunteer coaches out in the northern Indian communities to introduce kids to hockey and “to share happiness & change lives, one puck at a time.”

 

Now I knew that we were going to the Himalayas, and at 3500 meters above sea level I had heard the air was a bit thinner. So being the good dad that I am, I took K up a day earlier so that he could acclimatize a little bit. Beyond that the realities of things like AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) didn’t really sink in — until it hit me. I chalk this entirely up to my post-dengue state as K, of course, was fine. Now Acute Mountain Sickness sounds bad, but it really is just a scary medical term for things like headaches, fatigue, and an upset stomach. Nothing that some rest, hydration, and perhaps a little bit of oxygen can’t set straight. The real problem is that if you don’t take care of the symptoms it can lead to nasty things like HACE and HAPE – High Altitude Cerebral Edema and High Altitude Pulmonary Edema. Now I am not a doctor (well, not a real doctor) but I know that the word Edema is bad, especially when conjoined to words like Cerebral or Pulmonary. So when T, Q, and K2 joined us the following day and Q wanted to go on a 10 kilometer run, I had to put my foot down and tell him that he would have to take it easy with the exercise.

 

(If you have been counting your letters you may have noticed that C did not make the trip to Leh. She was off with the school soccer team at a tournament in Chennai, on the eastern coast of India. Their tournament had originally been planned for early December but political unrest in the region led to it being postponed until last weekend. C and her teammates played really well, came 4^th out of 11 teams, and they had lots of fun. We got a text from her on Saturday afternoon saying she had “hurt her foot, but it wasn’t that bad.” We arrived home to find her on crutches and the doctor diagnosed her with torn ligaments. So she is now supposed to rest her foot completely for the next 6 weeks…wish us luck keeping her still.)

 

The hockey tournament was great and the weather was perfect for pond hockey, about -5 or -10 at its coldest during the day, -15 to -20 at night. K played for the New Delhi Sacred Bulls, a team made up mainly of Canadian diplomats and expats as well as a few friends along for the ride. K was the youngest on his team by about 15 years and was a bit nervous about not having played hockey for 10 months, at least until he heard some people joking about how they hadn’t been on skates for years. He played very well, kept his team in the game, had lots of fun, and we are still trying to wipe the grin off of his face.

 (I remember when his head didn’t even reach the crossbar – he’s grown almost 4 inches since we got here)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

(Delhi Bulls and Indian Selects)

  

(No Zamboni’s in Ladakh: Cleaning the ice with straw brooms and shovels – fixing the ice by hand and using tea kettles to smooth it out)

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

When we weren’t at the rink we were able to rest at the hotel, the kids had fun playing with other Canadian kids, and we even got to do some sightseeing. The scenery was spectacular, but one of the most surprising things to me was the almost complete lack of snow. Leh is in what is described as an arctic desert so while it is cold, very little snow actually makes it over the mountains.

  

(Monks at Spituk Gonba Monastary)

  
 (T with the Taras – the vase-like things holding lotus flower stems were brought from Tibet by the Dahlia Lama)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next year the tournament is going to be held in early February in Durbruk which is a few hours outside of Leh and the Ladhak Winter Sports Club will officially be going for designation by the Guinness World Book of Records as the World’s Highest Hockey Tournament. If anybody is interested in playing, talk to K. He is already trying to figure out the best way to fly from Edmonton and minimize the number of classes he will miss at University next year!