The 170-kilometre padayatra of Anant Ambani, Director of Reliance Industries Limited, from Jamnagar to Dwarka, has entered its eighth day.
Speaking to reporters, Anant said, “Today is the 8th day of padayatra. I am going to bow my head before Dwarikadhish.”
After setting out on March 29, he has been covering about 20 kilometres daily, walking for about seven hours each night. He will reach Dwarka, a city etched in India’s religious and spiritual lore, on April 8, a day before his 30th birthday.
Along the way, Ambani has encountered an attitude of reverence and goodwill some have walked along with him a part of the way in solidarity, others have given his pictures of the presiding deity Lord Dwarkadhish and still others have come over with their horses to get their pictures taken.
Ambani’s padayatra is also remarkable for the fact that the strenuous journey has been undertaken surmounting the debility caused by Cushing’s Syndrome a rare hormonal disorder and morbid obesity, as well as asthma and a severe lung disease.
On this spiritual padayatra, Anant has been chanting the Hanuman Chalisa, Sunderland, and the Devi Stotra on his way to Dwaraka.
The younger son of Reliance Industries’ Mukesh Ambani is a devout Sanatani who wears his spiritual passion on his sleeve. Some of India’s most iconic religious destinations are his regular haunts and the beneficiaries of his munificence Badrinath, Kedarnath, Kamakhya, Nathdwara, Kalighat and the Kumbh Mela, to name just few.
There is also a business to run he oversees the world’s largest refinery and directs the country’s biggest new energy transformation projects. Then, there is the Vantara animal refuge he founded, which was inaugurated by no less a person than Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Ambani is showing that he can walk in the footsteps of a holy spiritual tradition while also creating the future in the world of business.
