In the frozen winters of Ladakh, long before structured leagues, scoreboards or spectator stands existed, ice hockey was played on makeshift village ponds.
Families would pour water over open fields overnight, allowing the harsh Himalayan cold to transform farmland into temporary rinks. By morning, entire communities would gather children balancing on skates, elders watching from the sidelines united by a sport that was never formally introduced to them but gradually became their own.
Today, that same organic winter pastime is steadily evolving into one of India’s most unlikely high-performance sporting ecosystems driven not by a traditional federation-led system, but through Royal Enfield’s Social Mission, under the Eicher Group Foundation.
At the heart of this transformation lies a long-standing relationship between the brand and the Himalayan region. Royal Enfield’s association with the terrain dates back to the early 1950s when its motorcycles were deployed by the Indian Army for patrols in high-altitude areas. Over time, that logistical necessity turned into something far deeper a cultural connection that led the company to identify the Himalayas as its “spiritual home.”
Speaking during the Royal Enfield Ice Hockey League earlier this year, Vigyat Singh from the Eicher Group Foundation described how the organisation’s involvement with the sport emerged naturally from years of community engagement in the region.
“Whenever we worked in Ladakh, the community always reached out to us for help in supporting ice hockey,” Singh explained.
That outreach eventually led to a formal intervention when Ladakh’s administration requested Royal Enfield’s support in creating a roadmap for the sport’s development. The result was a comprehensive strategic blueprint titled The Game Changer Blueprint for the Development of Ice Hockey in Ladakh, created in consultation with the Ice Hockey Association of India and the International Ice Hockey Federation.
The document laid down a long-term vision not merely to popularise the sport domestically, but to build an ecosystem capable of eventually fielding an Indian ice hockey team at the Winter Olympics.
From that vision grew a multi-layered developmental structure.
At the grassroots level, Royal Enfield launched its “Learn to Play” coaching programme, which has since expanded across 23 villages in Ladakh’s Nyoma, Nubra, Zanskar, Leh and Kargil regions. Targeting children aged between six and fifteen, the programme focuses on basic skating skills, balance and game awareness while also introducing structured training during the winter months. By the end of the 2025–26 season, nearly 1,000 children are expected to have undergone introductory training.
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But participation alone cannot sustain a sport’s growth expertise must follow.
Recognising this, the Social Mission introduced a “Train-the-Trainer” initiative to professionalise coaching within the region. In November 2025, 67 local coaches were trained at the Himadri Indoor Ice Rink in Dehradun under IIHF-certified instructor Darryl Easson, who has previously worked with national teams in the United Kingdom and Hungary. These trained coaches now return to their communities to conduct training camps and identify emerging talent.
Parallel initiatives have also targeted referee education and specialised goalkeeper training acknowledging that technical officiating and position-specific coaching are essential for competitive progression.
All of this grassroots and technical investment ultimately feeds into the Royal Enfield Ice Hockey League (REIHL), which has emerged as India’s premier winter sports competition. Season 3 of the league, held between January 29 and February 14, 2026 in Leh, featured 17 teams across men’s and women’s categories and introduced a round-robin format to maximise match exposure for athletes.
For Singh, however, success is not defined solely by medals or national team selections.
“For us, success is actually to see more and more people participate,” he said.
This philosophy is particularly visible in the mission’s focus on women’s participation. With the rise of the Indian women’s ice hockey team internationally, participation at pond-level tournaments has surged with increasing numbers of young girls now taking up the sport in remote Himalayan villages.
Infrastructure remains another critical pillar.
A landmark artificial indoor ice rink is currently under development at the NDS Stadium in Leh a ₹51 crore project featuring a full-sized Olympic-standard rink and automated chilling systems. Once operational, it will allow year-round training, addressing one of Indian ice hockey’s most significant historical constraints: reliance on natural ice available only between December and February.
Beyond performance pathways, the broader impact of the programme is already being felt across Ladakh’s socio-economic landscape. Structured winter competitions such as REIHL and the Spiti Cup have contributed to seasonal tourism and created employment opportunities for local youth involved in coaching, event management and logistics.
Equally important is its role in countering rural migration offering young athletes viable opportunities to remain within their communities while pursuing competitive sport. From overnight frozen fields to professional leagues and Olympic ambitions, the evolution of Himalayan ice hockey represents a rare convergence of community resilience, corporate intervention and sporting aspiration.
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What began as a mobility solution for army patrols has quietly become the foundation of India’s most ambitious winter sports ecosystem one that now dreams not just of participation, but progression on the global stage.
