Monday, November 28, 2011

thebli - ball made from inner tube strips

I have a Tibetan monk friend, Palden, who lives in India.  We write letters to each other and he was telling me about how he and the other monks at his university make a rubber ball out of strips of bicycle inner tube tied together with string.  Then they play a game where he said that they try to bounce it in the air with their feet and get it past the opponent's goal or line.

I couldn't imagine what the ball looked like, but the game description reminded me of what we call a "hackey sack", or foot bag, in the United States.  I'm used to just seeing people pass it to each other in a circle, not competing as teams. But it also reminded me of a game I'd seen played before in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where players were kicking a hackey sack over a net.  I never knew what it was called until I looked on YouTube.  Looks like what I saw was called footbag net (I think this video is even in Golden Gate Park).  But it looks like a more worldwide version is Sepak Takraw. Amazing how good these players are
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9W5ZBZW8C8&feature=related

Still, those were different balls.  So I asked my friend to send me a picture of the ball that they made.  Instead, he actually sent me one of the balls!  He called it a thebli, and he also spelled it thebbli.  Here is a picture of it:

I searched online for those spellings, and I tried tebli and tebbli, but didn't find anything.  (If you want to make one though, I did find this instructables post to make something very similar).  It may be a made-up spelling of a Tibetan word.  He said they also just call it a Tubeball.

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