10 Indian sports that you should know about

#2 Yubi Lakpi

Yubi Lakpi is rugby, which is played not with a ball but with a coconut dipped in oil.

Yubi Lakpi is rugby, with an oily twist. The game, which originated in Manipur involves two teams battling for a coconut dipped in oil, in the place of a ball. The players are required to carry the coconut across the goal-line to a box.

What adds more interest to the game is that the players smear their bodies with mustard oil and water, making the task of grabbing the player with a ball inexplicably hard. In Manipur, it is largely believed that Yubi Lakpi is the forbear of modern rugby and that the western world stole their idea of the sport. Emma Levine, an English writer who researches Asian sports, too wonders if Yubi Lakpi could indeed have been rugby’s root.