In India, where padayatras are an intrinsic element of the country’s civilisational heritage, a scion of the country’s wealthiest family has embarked on a walking pilgrimage redolent of this very Indian way of seeking union with the divine. Anant Ambani, 29, is on a 170-kilometre padayatra from Jamnagar, his ancestral hometown and Karmabhoomi, to Dwarka, one of India’s holiest cities.
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 that is 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 to surmount the debility caused by Cushing’s Syndrome–a rare hormonal disorder—and morbid obesity, as well as asthma and severe lung disease.
Along this spiritual padyatra, Anant has been chanting hanuman chalisa, sundarkand and 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. And then there is the Vantara animal refuge he has founded and 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.
