LEH: The Ladakh ice hockey team's preparation for winning laurels for India at the next Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in Italy in 2026, has hit an unexpected roadblock. The team could have perhaps contended with and found a solution if it had been something like lack of form of players, or even funds crunch or infrastructure issues. Instead, it finds itself crippled by an existential crisis to which they have simply no answer - how can they play ice hockey without ice.
While rising temperatures in the union territory (UT) of Ladakh, a cold desert perched in the far north of the country, have become a reason for universal concern, prompting engineer and education reformer Sonam Wangchuk to go on a hunger strike earlier this year - to demand autonomy for Ladakh and highlight the damage done to the region's ecology and glaciers by indiscreet industrialisation - for the ice hockey team, climate change has become a far more personal and professional hazard. Leh, Ladakh's capital and biggest city, reportedly recorded a high 33.5 degrees Celsius temperature in July this year, while the region's Kargil vision saw temperatures rise to 37.5 degrees Celsius. The Union Territory also received only 12% of the expected rainfall.
