Hi guys
My New E-Book Shankaracharya is Now Live on KDP
you can watch and download it from here – https://www.amazon.in/dp/B09MB7H79F
Continue ReadingHi guys
My New E-Book Shankaracharya is Now Live on KDP
you can watch and download it from here – https://www.amazon.in/dp/B09MB7H79F
Continue ReadingHi Guys
My New E-Book PUTLI Hindi Version – Now ON KDP,
Please Watch From Here
Hindi Version – https://kdp.amazon.com/amazon-dp-action/in/dualbookshelf.marketplacelink/B09M3X7QRP
English Version – https://www.amazon.in/Putli-Wanna-Play-Anuj-Tikku-ebook/dp/B097B97MZH
Continue ReadingEnd of First Month
I was delighted when I took my weight on a full stomach after breakfast in the morning. As I stood on the weighing scale to see and measure the impact of my power walking and diet schedule I was elated. I weigh exactly 94.5 kg today my weight one month back when I started my schedule was 99 kgs. This means I have lost 4.5 kg in the last 31 days. I have thus overachieved my target of losing 4 kgs a month.
That has been achieved due to pawer walking and a strict diet. My average walking per week was.
Week one: 5.2 km
Week Two: 6.5 km
Week Three: 7 km
Week Four: 8.2 km
I stuck to my diet plan of soups, dals, toast, boiled egg, fruits, and fruit juices. That helped in the fat reduction process immensely. I am attaching my photo’s at the end of the first month of my weight loss program. As you can see my double chin is reduced and a bit of my girth but I feel it will take one full month of exercising to see the real impact of my schedule. Till then stay tuned folks.
Continue ReadingI am in the fourth week of my power walking and weight loss program and one thing I can say is that I have got the entire program embedded into my daily routine and process. Now if I don’t go for my walk I feel restless, I feel the day has gone by but something is still missing, I have started having a lot of fruits during the day like apples, pears, and fruit juices. The entire day is only a liquid diet, tomato soup, bowl full of yellow dal tow Katori of chicken corn soup. I have stopped having even roti’s nowadays and supplement that with a few toast and a boiled egg for breakfast. I have lost the taste for rice, mutton, cheese, and butter they mean nothing to me now.
Along with my morning schedule, I walk schedule I am able to clock 9 to 10 km of power walking a day. I try and lose myself in my head as I walk it helps as one loses a sense of time. I perspire while brisk walking and keep having large gulps of water from my bottle. The other day I felt like taking a pee and quickly ran behind a tree to take a piss, a student coming from the back shouted,” Uncle that is the pipal tree you are pissing under its a scared tree, stop …” saying this he turned and glared at me, I had no choice but to finish my leek and then I sheepishly walked passed him as if I had not even heard what he had said.
Yes indeed there are a lot of Pipal trees in the BHU campus along the way and I managed to click a few of them. In ancient Vedic tradition, the Pipal tree is magical and is worshipped as sacred and pious. They say that Ghosts and Preet at ma reside in the Pipal tree. They do look large and splendid in the night though.
I took an electric rickshaw back from the campus area and was happy that some students were my fellow travelers.” You know we are the number one university in the world in terms of size we have the largest campus of all .” A fellow student called Nitesh sitting in front of me reminded me .” Well is it not IIT I am sure the IIM’s also has a huge campus .” I was surprised as I thought the statement was not entirely true .” I am sure BHU is one of the oldest and ancient of our universities, in fact, my mother studied here too. But in terms of infrastructure and technology, there are many large universities in India .” My reply startled the young man who likes a frog in a well thought that the well was the entire universe .” No no, we have the let set technology and the largest number of subjects are taught here, you can come here and study in any stream of your choice .” The young man went on to acquaint me that he was not entirely wrong. I quite like the rickshaw ride at times and take it on my way back when I ahem finished my walk.
Continue ReadingYesterday I took a bit of a detour and walked towards Asse Ghat situated at the back of my hotel. I walked through the ghats and took a boat the boatman by the name of Shukla asked me for two thousand rupees to take me from one ghat to another and then across the river Ganges up to the bridge. On the way, I saw a majestic ferry all light up taking passengers across the river so that they could witness the Arti taking place on the ghat. My desire was to stop at the Mani Kanika Ghat and the Harish Chandra Ghat this is where the dead are burnt and cremated morning noon and night the funeral pyres burn bright. I hopped on the Harish Chandra Ghat as my boatman tied the knot of the boat and let me loose on the bank.
I walked up a few steps and inspected the area where huge logs of wood were placed, the wood was taken from here to create the funeral pyre. I could see a few goats loitering around and there were mourners who had come to burn their dead. There was a live kirtan going on around one of the funeral pyres.
Till then enjoy the pictures of my ghat hopping excursion.
Today was the first time after three weeks that I managed to clock 10.5 km in a single day. I did a forty minutes walk in the morning and followed it with a two-hour-plus walk in the evening session. It has been tough and tiring but I have managed to be motivated to continue my schedule.
“ You have become like a foreigner they also walk the whole day most of them they come to the city and all they do is walk through the streets. You are becoming like agora sahib .” Tiwari reminded me when I boasted to him about my fitness schedule. I managed my customary four glasses of orange juice and even did some fruit shopping and bought some fresh flowers and essence sticks for my daily Pooja ritual, something that has stayed with me post-Diwali. My weekly distance covers have gone up week on week from 5.2 km to 6.5 km to 7 km for the last three weeks and that has given me satisfaction that I am on track to loose at least 4 kilos this month.
Burning fat is never easy and I am finding that out, lucky for me I have stuck to my diet plan as well that which will help me really achieve my weight loss goals. For me, the transition from fat to fit is happening effortlessly ad that’s what is great about this exercise it is coming from within me and I am doing things in a disciplined manner. As they say “ Discipline se bada koi Guru nahi Hota .” By dividing my day into rituals I keep myself busy and focused on my hourly timetable, plus I loose myself in my head while I walk and that way I loose sense of time, otherwise just walking around the city can get boring.
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Prior to COVID-19, travel and tourism had grown to be one of the most important industries in the global economy, accounting for 10% of global GDP and employing over 320 million people worldwide. In 1950, at the dawn of the jet era, only 25 million people travelled abroad. By 2019, the figure had climbed to billions of dollars. For many economies, the travel and tourist business had grown to almost unfathomable proportions.The global pandemic, the first of its kind in a new era of interconnection, has put 100 million jobs at risk, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization. Many work in little and medium-sized businesses that employ a large number of women, who make up a large portion of the tourist labour. Tourism-dependent countries are likely to face the brunt of the crisis’s impacts for a much longer period of time than other economies.
We can expect an increase in international travel within nations. With manageable and moderate COVID-19 cases and vaccination availability. As long as death and hospitalization rates remain low, these regions are willing to accept rising case levels. A large proportion of the population in numerous European countries and the United States has been immunized. Such people are confident enough to travel both locally and internationally, thanks to the implementation of safety measures such as the EU-issued digital health certificates given to people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Despite variable rates of new caseloads in these places, the vaccine’s efficacy (to reduce the spread of the disease) has been demonstrated thus far.
The most immediate objective for all enterprises in the travel supply chain is to restore capacity or, at the very least, ensure their ability to do so. Many contracts and temporary workers in the restaurant business who were laid off during the epidemic have found new occupations and are hesitant to return to their previous positions, resulting in a labor shortage. Last year, more than one in every 10 workers in the United Kingdom departed the hotel industry. In the United States, there was still a shortage of about two million leisure and hospitality employment in April, which was significantly worse than before the outbreak.
Find amazing trekking, camping, and sightseeing tours across India here!
Travel firms may need to reconsider their business strategies. Airline passengers and hotel visitors will have different profiles: more leisure guests, later booking periods, and a greater demand for flexible tickets. Historical booking curves are no longer a reliable predictor of future behavior. To forecast demand and improve pricing, travel businesses must use every source of information available to them. Flexible pricing structures can also alleviate customer anxiety in the face of today’s increased levels of unpredictability. EasyJet, for example, now offers a Protection Promise program that allows travelers to make free adjustments up to two hours before their departure. Hotels will need to find other uses for meeting and conference rooms, which will be more difficult to fill. Airlines must figure out how to fill intercontinental business class, which is most likely to be done through premium leisure promotions. The growth in passenger numbers may be greater than the boom in earnings for all travel companies, as the most profitable corporate business has been late to return.
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Well, I started my fitness schedule exactly three weeks back and I weighed 99.5 kgs when I decided to do something about my obesity. I was forty-seven and not getting younger and I had been diagnosed with a fatty liver a few years back, although I had no diabetes, blood pressure or heart problem the fatty liver was not due to drinking whisky it was because I had become obese. This fat and obesity had grown over a decade of neglect and self-indulgence. As long as I was travelling I was active but come to Corona the travelling stopped and I started putting on weight just sitting in my room for months on end. My non-vegetarian diet full of chocolates and sweets did not help either.
But now I have discovered the virus of power walking today was the second day I clocked 9.5 km. Now I walk for half an hour in the morning and try and do about two hours of walking in the evening. My target is to walk for 10 km everyday month on month that over 15,000 steps a day.
I will have to lose nine kilos just so that I can be fit enough to do stomach crunches, dips, squats, sit-ups and other aerobic exercises. That will take me two months, just to burn enough weight so that I can move to more robust and difficult exercises. My diet remains as planned lots of hydrates soups and dals along with digestive biscuits and chicken momo’s, I do mane some idli sambhar, boiled egg, toast for breakfast as well. The trick is to eat slowly and enjoy the food bit by bit, recommend you eat your lunch and dinner in two instalments, eat half the lunch and. Thereat the other half after an hour, do the same for your dinner. You will realise that this way you will be eating six meals a day. Don’t increase the quantity of food you eat but increase the time you take to eat it.
Good ten hours of sleep nine hours of nightly sleep and a one-hour afternoon nap is a must to get that aching body to recuperate and gain strength back so that you can continue with your schedule.
I make sure I keep having juice and coconut water throughout the day and manage to get four hours off writing as well through the day. I have added fifteen minutes of Pooja ritual in the day, I have a Laxmi Ganesh statue in my room and I have been lighting Diya’s in front of it to pray since Diwali time. The Diya, dhoop add a great smell and aura to my room.I have to be patient losing weight is a gradual process and will take time effort and consistency like anything else.
I am glad I ahem taken the first few steps of what promises to be a challenging yet rewarding journey.
Continue ReadingToday I had to go through a lot of traffic the city has come to a standstill as the holidays have begun for Diwali Pooja, the whole city is on the streets in the late evenings. The festivities are in full flow as shopkeepers are on the street selling their wears. It was like walking through a meal as people danced on the street and firecrackers were burst on the street.
I had to stop often as the traffic would pile up and clog the Lanka street every ten meters or so and it was very tiresome. But as I reached the campus area my walking speed picked up and I clocked another 8.5 km today as well this included the half an hour walk I do in the morning between 11:00 am to 12:00 noon.
I kept it at my pace and made sure I did sweat a lot otherwise there is no fat burn. I managed to stop at my customary juice center to hydrate myself but the shop was closed so no fruit juice here. I had to keep going till I finally found a shop indie the campus and gulped three glasses of orange juice. Juice breaks are important since I walk about one hour forty minutes in the evening couple of breaks help in catching a breath and can increase the distance covered.
Today I took a hitchhike to the main gate of BHU on the way out, two students passed me on their scooters and asked me to hop on to the gate. I duly obliged I would have done another two kilometers otherwise.
The way back was on an electric rickshaw as again I had to grind through city traffic and bicycles, they’re where pedestrians everywhere and the rickshaw. found it difficult at times to navigate the traffic.
Continue ReadingToday was Diwali the festival of light the festival with which India has won the world. The victory of good over evil, as darkness and ignorance is removed with light and truth. I got up early and the noise of crackers bursting outside my hotel window was an indication to me that it was Diwali day. The first thing I did was to get my room cleaned up and had my bed made just as new. I then had a bath and light up three Diya’s in my room one such Diya I put outside my window. I also light up some incense sticks to freshen up the room and give it a spiritual feel.
I felt light and spoke to an old friend after a year, he is my spiritual friend born in New Zealand Geoffrey is a baba and a spiritual guru who spends most of his years in India searching for Indian spirituality and meditation. He has spent years in ashrams on the mountains of Uttarakhand and searched for spiritual gurus in Haridwar. He can speak Hindi and is an ace with astrology charts. That’s how we got friendly I just wanted to know what my future was and will it pan out the way I have anticipated it .” Happy Diwali brother I can feel it you have the blessings of your guru OSHO and Satguru watching over you, you have the grace of these great spiritual masters. Life bodes well for you and so does your future .” Geoffrey told me over the phone, he was more concerned about the negative impact of Corona vaccines in the west and how many more have died in the past few months due to it.
In the afternoon I gave a dewlap bonus to my blog team member Vivek and all the helpers and waiters in the hotel I was staying Rs 500 to each of them after all they have looked after me for months. I walked up to Tiwari Ji’s house and wished him a happy Diwali, even he demanded his Diwali Bonus and rightfully got it another Rs 1500 gone as Diwali bonus.
I walked back towards the Durga Kunda temple and decided to do some Pooja shopping, I bought fruits, nuts, clay idols, clay Diya, red chunni, and agarbatti. The evening was spent making a mini temple in my room where I placed marigold garlands and flowers around the idol of Laxmi and Ganesh and light up three oil diyas. Then with folded hands, I prayed for the health and well beings of my friends and family. I took the time to think about my dead father and mother who is no more and deeply prayed for their soul. It all happened spontaneously it has been years since I celebrated Diwali on my own accord and went through the trouble of performing a full-fledged Pooja that too on my own.
It is strange Varanasi is the city where people come to burn their dead and loom for Moksha or glimpses into the afterlife. I am here in this city the city of death and I am celebrating the festival of lights here in the very city on whose ghats looms death at all times.
On my way back to the hotel a coconut vendor recognized me, I had been buying coconut water from him on route to Tiwari’s house,” you don’t come here to have coconut water nowadays?” The vendor asked politely,” Oh! I am busy walking to the university these days .” I replied and appraised him about my new walking route.
There is no doubt I enjoy staying in Varanasi and Diwali can be very spiritually invigorating in this city. People are simple and the city is cheap, one can live here for peanuts no doubt all the backpackers come here you can live in this city for months on a pittance of a budget. But the real way to enjoy the city is to walk through it as most foreign tourists do.
The loud sound of firecrackers exploding in the air goes on relentlessly and I can hear the Diwali bombs explode outside my room window coupled with the hissing of the fire rockets and the fizzing of the fire charkha. There are bright flashes of light as one crater after another is lit up by over-enthusiastic children and teenage boys. Even the rickshaw wala was demanding a Diwali bonus. I guess in this ancient Vedic Hindu city on the banks of the Ganges the tradition oF Diwali is celebrated with a lot more zest and a sense of piousness.
My Facebook and WhatsApp were full of happy Diwali messages and messages of Diwali brand promotions. Even my property broker send me a happy Diwali message, I managed to wish my grandmother and was thrilled with my solo effort at organizing my own Pooja the, Prasadam well I ate most of it and gave the rest of the fruits and barfi to the hotel staff who have looked after me well.
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