Of Cricket and Snowmen

by Umang Mittal (Australia)

I didn't expect to find India

A month ago I would not have expected to find myself knee-deep in snow. I had never even seen snow before. I definitely had not expected myself to be playing a game of cricket whilst knee-deep in snow. Oddly enough, it seemed appropriate considering I was in India for the Cricket World Cup, chasing my team across the subcontinent. Flying from Australian, I arrived on a hazy afternoon in Kolkata. I had just stepped out of the terminal, squinting in the sudden brightness when I spotted my childhood chum who had also just flown in from Mumbai. We had planned well to finally be here, booking tickets a year in advance. However a last minute change meant the match had been moved to Bangalore, 2000kms south! With a lot of string-pulling we changed our travel plans. But as we stood there with Kolkata at our feet, we had four days to ourselves. We had planned to spend this time in the mountains. We set our sights to Sikkim, high up in the Himalayas. With an hour to board our train, we left for the station making a small detour in a congested market to buy the essentials – papersoap, toilet paper and a brand new cricket bat! Sleeping overnight on the train, we arrived to a cool morning in Siliguri, the foothills of the Himalayas. Being budget conscious, we found ourselves stuffed in the back of a tiny jeep. Atleast 10 of us in a vehicle meant for no more than 8. Ironically we had to sit there stationary for an hour because the driver needed 12 passengers to breakeven. When we finally started moving, we realised we were better off stationary. The winding climb up the mountains brought upon my friend, the most acute case of “let me empty the contents of my train breakfast out through the window and make the pristine mountainside mine forever”. The lurching of the communal taxi at every hairpin bend meant the trajectory of my friend’s aim remained anyone’s guess. The other 10 passengers were in no mood to find out, so we got voted into first class - up front with the driver. My friend with a window to himself, and me straddling the gearstick. As we ascended, the cool air settled things. But it also made us acutely aware of how fast the temperature was falling. We were not prepared. It was too late to go clothes shopping, so we did the next best thing. At the next roadside shack, we bought ourselves a bottle of brandy! We might have needed a drink straight away because as we crossed 10,000 feet above sea level, there was no road left. Just a little channel of crumbling stones cut in the rock face with a quick, efficient drop to a certain death in the valley below. As we pulled into our destination, Yumthang, our headlights shone across a leopard cub running across the road. The pictures we had seen of our accommodation when booking had definitely lied to us, as we walked into a little tin-roof plywood hut even the second little pig would have been ashamed to call home. It took every item of clothing, sleeping bags and quilts to keep us warm that night. Here we had come prepared for an Indian summer! Despite drinking our brandy dry, we had to sleep with our gloves and hats that night! In the morning, ice in the tap was our first clue. When we opened our door and looked at the snow covered mountain facing us, it struck us. We were later told there was two feet of snowfall that night and the temperature had fallen to -20°C. The sun now shining down on us, we forgot everything, ran out with bat and ball in hand and started our cricket journey with what we like to think was the only time anyone played cricket in the snow. We even made a snowman umpire. I guess it doesn’t matter what age you are when you first see snow! A couple of weeks later, my team went on to win the World Cup - a memorable footnote to the story of my first time seeing snow.