Sadly, I came home to see and converse with one of my dear friends a few last times before she slipped into a place where she could no longer speak. She was diagnosed with a gynecological cancer last summer. It took her life last week. I sat by her side, hand in mine, mostly during the last week of her life. Watching her, remembering times we shared, conversations we had, while processing her dying.

She was wildly vivacious, my friend. Her laugh – and she often found reason to laugh at things I said – filled the room with a rosy glow. The last few years she cried more than she laughed, her life challenges overwhelming to her. When I think back over the conversations we had during that time period, I recall her disappointments, her sadness, and her feelings of lack. She had stopped participating in her life, mostly, I think, because it became too much for her.

Sometime during the 80’s she had traveled around India for a year, studying music and Odissi dance. She returned to India briefly a few years ago to take a crash course in Ayurveda, but said that India was exhausting to her. She did however return with a lovely story.

She and a friend traveled to Amritsar together where they encountered a cycle rickshaw wallah who insisted on being their personal taxi while they were visiting the city. They initially resisted but his persistence won them over. They got to know him through their outings and learned that his cycle had been stolen a few months earlier. He told them how it had burdened he and his family since he now had to rent one and share his profits. Touched by his manner and story, they decided they wanted to gift him with his own cycle. He was beside himself with joy when they presented it to him, as were all the people who helped them along the way with finding the perfect one. I wish that I would have recorded her telling of the story; the details of it brought everyone she shared it with to tears. She was like that, giving and loving.

A few days after she left her body I think I saw her in the form of a deer that was glowing in the early morning light. Free, at peace, and illuminating.

The company has hired Ravi Deol as chairman and chief executive of Mars Restaurants, the hotel and food services division of IHC, to initate acquisitions. Deol is the former managing director of Barista and ex-chief executive of FieldFresh Foods.

“We are looking to add 2,000 hotel rooms across 17 cities, including metros and towns such as Lucknow, Amrtisar, Raipur, Chandigarh among others. We may acquire hotel groups having 5-7 properties. We are also looking at acquiring restaurants or restaurant chains and then take them to the leadership position,” Deol told Business Standard.

All these acquisitions will be done by Mars Restaurant. “We may go for a rebranding of an existing hotel chain as and when we acquire them,” Deol said.

IHC has formed a $200-million ‘hospitality opportunity fund’ and $220 million worth of warrants to be converted into equity. The balance amount will be raised by selling equity or through borrowings, IHC executives said.

Mars Restaurants has brands Such as Tendulkars’ (a 50:50 joint venture with cricketer Sachin Tendulkar), China Joe, The Pizzeria, Dosa Diner among others, while Gordon House is a venture of Mars Restaurants and currently has three properties in Mumbai and Pune. The acquisitions will add to the portfolio of Gordon House hotels.

The Indian leisure and hospitality industry is set for high growth, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. According to industry estimates, the Indian hotel and hospitality industry generates foreign exchange earnings of Rs 35,000 crore each year in addition to Rs 10,000-12,000 crore generated from Indian customers.

The market size of branded fast-food and dine-in restaurants is estimated at over Rs 600 crore. This segment is grwoing in double digits annually attracting players like IHC, industry experts said.

According to sources, popular north Indian restaurant chain Nirulas along with Clarks hotel chain may be on the radar of IHC for acquisition and subsequent re-branding.

On the air-catering front, IHC is looking to expand SkyGourmet to 11 cities from six metros at present. SkyGourment will soon set up its air catering facilities in Kochi, Jaipur and Amritsar among other cities.

“We will also expand our air catering services globally when Kingfisher goes international. We are already catering for Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines, Air India Express, Indian Airlines, Malaysian Airlines and Air France. We are looking at providing catering to Emirates and Lufthansa too,” Deol said. SkyGourmet was incorporated in 2002 and is headquartered in Mumbai and employs about 1,150 people.

Najlepsze Zdjęcia można zobaczyć tutaj. .... na razie jest ich tam dość mało, .... ale jak będę miał więcej czasu to postaram się wrzucić więcej.

Amritsar jest nieustannie odwiedzany przez tysiące pielgrzymów z całych Indii. Świątynia i cały kompleks są bardzo fajne, ale niestety poza tym samo miasto jest do bani. Brud i syf. Amritsar nie przebija pod tym względem Agry gdzie pomimo holendarnych cen za wstęp do Taj Mahal tuż obok można zobaczyć strasznie zaniedbane miasteczko (ciekawe gdzie rozchodzą się pieniądze z biletów :) ). Zaniedbane w skali w Polsce po prostu nie znanej.

Zdjęcia Poniżej: 1) Złota Świątynia, 2) Sikh z klasycznym turbanem, 3) Sikh z MEGA turbanem, 4) Święta Kąpiel.

1)

2)

3)

4)

W Amritsarze w świątynnym kompleksie można dostać posiłek za darmo ("do pełnego brzucha"), można też tam za friko przenocować. Codziennie je tam 30 tysięcy osób. Na poniższych zdjęciach widać jak wygląda ta jadłodajnia i prawie skończony przeze mnie posiłek.

Ale Kuchnia ..... To było doświadczenie - zobaczyć w akcji te gigantyczne kotły i rzesze ludzi lepiące placki na Roti (Hinduski chleb). Mieliśmy szczęście bo jeden z chłopaków tam pracujących za kilka miesięcy wybiera sie do brata mieszkającego na Cyprze, czyli EU .... więc z wielką radością pytał nas o rożne szczegóły i "jak tam jest" , oprowadził nas też po kuchni :) , która naprawdę zrobiła na mnie duże wrażenie.

Granica Pakistańsko - Indyjska

Od kilku lat .... kiedy to stosunki pomiędzy Pakistanem a Indiami się nieco ociepliły, około 30km od Amritsaru na granicy pomiędzy tymi państwami codziennie dochodzi do oficjalnego podniesienia flagi wraz z wybajeżoną prezentacją Indyjskiej musztry. Mi się średni podobało , ale byłem w mniejszości - kilka tysięcy Hindusów skandowało Hindustan indabad (niech żyją Indie czy coś takiego) i bawiło się przednio :). Po pakistańskiej stronie fun był na takiej samej zasadzie ... jedyną różnicą było to że kobiety i mężczyźni byli rozdzieleni po stronie Pakistańskiej.

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Pozdrawiam

Kuba

© CopyRights - Jakub T. Jurkowski

The Express Bank has 8 entries which cover the journey through India, all shown below followed by a translation. At the point of entry to India there were 5 people left in the group, at the point where they leave there are only 4.

5月31日，我们今天乘巴士过境到了阿姆利则，一切顺利。

On the 31^st May, the group took a bus from Lahore, Pakistan, to Amritsar, in India.

6月1日，我们今天上午参观了金庙，下午骑行91公里到jalandhar，已住下。...

1^st June, group visited the Golden Temple in the morning and then cycled 91 kms in the afternoon to Jalandhar

今天冒雨骑行64公里到lahiana，距德里还有324公里，杨杰因有事已先回国。 阳&李：今天到ghazipur，一路顺利，太热，差点中暑，明天到bunxar。

2^nd June, cycled 64 kilometres in the rain to Lahiana. Still 324 kms from Delhi. Yang Jie returned home because of an emergency - unsure precisely what this sentence means - did Yang Jie return home to China today, or did he leave for China at some other point? How did he travel? What sort of emergency, was it here in India or in China?

今天骑行91公里到rajpura，天气炎热，明天搭车去德里，不日将到尼泊尔。

3^rd June, cycled 91 kms to Rajpura

6月4日，今天坐车到了德里，花了一下午在新德里找到旅馆，已安顿。

4^th June, travelled to Delhi by car to find a hotel. unsure if this really means ‘car’, more likely to be a bus.

阳&李：我们已经到边境城市motihari，明天或后天出境

5^th June. This is an entry from Yang Jiangying and Li Xiaoya who separated from the main party while in Iran and flew ahead to Delhi. They are now approaching the border town of Motihari and will enter Nepal shortly.

今天还在德里，刘佳想在印度多玩已去孟买，我们明后天坐车尽快去尼泊尔与阳李会合。

8^th June. In Delhi today, Liu Jia would like to go to Mumbai. The group intends joining the other riders in Nepal.

我们昨天中午坐车，德里至加德满都巴士，今天下午5点刚过印尼边境，距加都282公里，预计夜里到达。

9^th June. Today the group left Delhi for Kathmandu by bus at 17:00. Expect to arrive the following night.

To summarise where everyone is on the 9th June, -

· Yang Jie has returned to China

· Yang Jiangying and Li Xiaoya are approaching the border with Nepal

· Mo Hanyi was last heard of travelling by air from Pakistan to Kathmandu.

· The remaining four riders have cycled as far as Rajpura then taken a car/taxi/bus to Delhi, then caught another bus which will take them to Kathmandu where presumably they will reunite with the others and continue their journey over the Himalayas into Tib@t and China.

This is not quite how it was planned. The original idea was to cycle all the way from Athens to Beijing; about 12,5000 kilometres. Then, before the journey began, there was a change in itinerary and the section between Iran and India was replaced with a flight from Tehran to Mumbai. As the tour progressed Turkey and Iran seem to have proved to be so troublesome that they had taken to hitching lifts on trucks and buses. Most of Iran was negotiated by bus and train, not cycle, plus a substantial part of Pakistan. The route across India was intended to encompass many of the historical sights and cities of India but what was originally planned as a rather grand [and over-optimistic] 40 day tour of India has been reduced to less than two weeks of bus rides and a few days of cycling.

But it should leave them enough time to ride into and across China.

Links to other related posts can be found on the Accor Beijing page.

We also went to the Wagah border, one of the few over road border crossings between India and its neighbor, Pakistan. As you may have heard there is a bit of rivalry/tension between these two nations. However, here at Wagah, the gloves come off. Every evening the border is closed with much pomp and circumstance. The two rivals stare at each other over two separate, but equal, fences. The entire festivity is watched within a stadium divided in half by the border fence. Each side is thus a home side. A great deal of stomping and parading follows, which each side going crazy. The entire thing was in Urdu/Hindi, so we didn't really understand. However, in one of those universally human moments, when the opposing side yelled "Pakistan," a man behind me would yell the equivalent of SUCKS! followed by the laughter of his compatriots. Took me back to high school basketball. To add to the excitement, it was raining most of the time.

The whole day was filled with interesting cultural experiences. Overall, Amritsar has been pretty good to us, although the cycle rickshaw people here are particularly aggressive. We leave this town at like 5am and will be on our way back to Delhi to bring our journey full circle.