Four students of the CT Group of Institutions have designed an 800cc bike with their technical skills and creativity. The bike has been designed with technical expertise and unique features of power.

Encouraged by their first-ever attempt at making a bike, the four pass-outs of mechanical engineering, Manpuneet Singh, Manpreet Singh, Surinder Singh and Jaspreet Singh, took the initiative under the guidance of their project in charge and head of department Arvind Birdi. Extremely happy over the success of their endeavour, the students said they worked day and night to complete the project.

“It was a challenge for us to make a bike powered with an 800cc Maruti car engine. The bike runs 25 to 27 km per litre, which definitely speaks loud and clear about its endurance.” Manpuneet Singh said, “The chassis was unstable and the bike was not balanced properly as well. Above all, the bike was difficult to turn since the handle wasn’t properly designed. Even the transmission system needed overhauling. The stability, safety and performance of the bike were the main issues.”

The students specially went to Delhi to gather the necessary material for the bike. Made with a budget of Rs 60,000, the bike has caught the fancy of the youngsters. Earlier too a group of final-year students of B. Tech mechanical engineering (2004 batch) had modified and fabricated an 800cc bike with the help of the faculty and the management.

Chairman of the institution Charanjit Singh Channi said, “The bike was first made by a diploma student from CT Polytechnic. The bike was powered by a Maruti 800cc car engine and was mostly made from the recycled parts of other motorbikes. Initially, when the bike was made, a number of problems surfaced.” Later, the bike was handed over to these students. And the entire bike was redesigned. “As the material used in the previous bike was not durable, many changes had to be made,” said Surinder Singh. “With the structure of the bike getting more stable than earlier, the vibration level was reduced to a great extent. Even the exhaust used earlier was just a pipe but this time we used an exhaust muffler, which we brought from Delhi. This helped in reducing the noise level and was less polluting. The rear tyre was specifically selected for more stability and traction to the road,” maintained Jaspreet Singh, another student.

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The government proposes to connect Chamba and Kangra areas, which have a sizeable concentration of Gaddi population, by boring a tunnel across the Dhauladhar range.

This was stated by Chief Minister P.K. Dhumal while addressing members of the Gaddi community here today. Members of the community had called on him to thank him for appointing Trilok Kapoor as the chairman of the state wool federation. He said the tunnel would link Uttrala (Baijnath) in Kangra and Holi in Chamba.

The government had directed the authorities concerned to prepare a pre-feasibility report for the project. At present, members of the community, mostly inhabiting the upper areas of Baijnath and Holi, were required to undertake a long journey to get across.

He said the district headquarters of Chamba had already been connected with the Killar sub-divisional headquarter through Saach Pass, reducing the distance between the two placed by over 500 km. With the opening of the new road, the people would have to travel 170 km only.

Dhumla said the government had also created mobile schools facility for the benefit of nomadic Gaddis and Gujjars who could not send their children to regular schools. Efforts were being made to engage teacher from amongst the educated youth of the community.

Later, the same delegation called on transport minister Kishan Kapoor.

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REFF: Rohit granted conditional bail

Goa Children’s Court today granted conditional bail to state education minister Atanasio Monserratte’s son Rohit. The court granted conditional bail asking him to report to the Calangute police station for next three days.

Justifying the withdrawal of complaint against a high profile minister’s son whom she accused of raping her minor daughter, the German mother said she was afraid that her daughter may become “Scarlett-II”.

“Since the day I have filed the complaint on October 14, life has become hell for both me and my daughter. There are allegations and counter allegations in the media and we have now realised that we have been trapped in a situation (that is) not in our interest. We are also scared of being Scarlett-II,” reads the letter written and submitted by the German mother last afternoon.

The letter had sought to withdraw her complaint against Rohit, son of Goa education minister Atanasio Monserratte. The mother had complained that Rohit had raped her daughter.

The police had booked Rohit based on the complaint. He was arrested almost a month after the complaint was filed.

Scarlette, mentioned in the letter, is a British teenager who was found dead on Goa’s popular Anjuna Beach on February 18.

In the letter, the German mother has claimed that they were in a state of shock and depression and were scared of proceeding with the case, especially after the murderous attack on her counsel Aires Rodrigues, on the night before she was to formally register her complaint before a senior police officer.

“We have learnt the bitter truth, that making genuine complaints against the rich and mighty is entirely counter productive. We are constantly hounded, our names sullied, campaigns organised against us and all sorts of motives attributed to us,” the letter reads.

She claimed that the victim is being treated like accused in the entire case. “We are unable to lead normal life and even our lives are at stake. We are crushed under the weight of the rich and mighty and are strangers unable to beat the system,” the mother stated.

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India holding the Winter Olympics? Improbable as it seems, entrepreneurs planning to build a huge international ski resort in the Himalayas hope to make this dream feasible.

A team of tourism developers wants to introduce skiing as a mainstream sport to a nation generally unfamiliar with slalom or snowplow.

Ski lovers internationally have lamented the limited opportunities available in the world's highest mountain range; skiing at the highest levels can be reached only by helicopter. Other than that, India has two small ski resorts, one in Kashmir (vulnerable to the fluctuating security situation) and one in the northern state of Uttaranchal(with limited skiing).

The planned Himalayan Ski Village would be on a grand scale. The creators of the project say they believe they can transform a new generation of rich, young Indians into ski enthusiasts.

The state government of Himachal Pradeshhas given preliminary approval for the construction of a $500 million ski resort in the DhauladharMountains north of the old hippie resort of Manali. Architectural plans show a complex designed to the standards of resorts like Aspen and St. Moritz,but in local Himalayan style.

"India is an extremely young country and has an average age of 26 - this is driving a lot of new trends," said John Sims, managing director and founder of Himalayan Ski Village. "At the same time as the drop in average age, there has been an economic boom and huge wealth creation. You have this young, rich population with nothing to spend their money on. There is a huge groundswell towards adventure tourism. Skiing is going to take off."

Ravi Teja Sharma, assistant editor of Travel Trends Today, a monthly industry magazine, was also confident that skiing would become popular.

"There's a crowd of young Indians, just out of college, with a lot money to spend," he said. "An older generation might have been content to go sightseeing or take a pilgrimage in their spare time. But these are people who have taken high-paid jobs in call centers or the IT industry, and as a rule, they like to spend their holidays trekking, mountain climbing and rafting. They're not the kind of people to sit around looking at buildings. Skiing is the kind of thing they would enjoy."

Sims, a tourism consultant, conceived the project while trekking in the mountains in the 1990s and says the proposed resort has the backing of local politicians and villagers who want to attract investment to the region.

The $150 million needed for the first phase of the development has already been raised, thanks partly to an investment by Alfred Ford, a great-grandson of the automobile tycoon Henry Ford who is chairman of Himalayan Ski Village and one of the project's most enthusiastic supporters.

Hotel chains like Hyatt and Oberoi are bidding to build large complexes in the resort, but Sims hopes the local spirit will dictate style rather than the big conglomerates; think curry and masala tea instead of spiced wine and fondue.

"This is not about massive villas and silver fox coats," Sims said. "I hope it will be about touching the mountains with reverence."

Initial plans for the Himalayan Ski Village include 300 villas and 700 five-star hotel rooms built over 20 hectares, or 50 acres, in an area 2,800 to 4,200 meters above sea level, or 9,200 to 14,000 feet. The land will be leased from the Himachal Pradesh government for 99 years.

Housing will range from cheap dormitories to chalets on sale for around $1.5 million. If the preliminary statement of support from the local authorities is translated into formal approval, construction could begin in 2007 and should take two years.

The builders expect the main market to be novice Indian skiers, but tourists from the Middle East and Europe will also be targets. As snowfalls become less predictable in Europe, the consortium also hope Europeans will travel to India to find better natural snow.

"People have been complaining about the snow in Europe for the past 15 years," said Glenn Trotman, the project's chief financial officer. "They are looking for new terrains."

Amitabh Kant,joint secretary at the Ministry of Tourism, said international investment was vital to get a project like this off the ground. "India has the potential, but we need an international player to bring in the necessary infrastructure," he said.

In the summer, the ski complex will be transformed into a hill station, and the hope is to attract large numbers of urban dwellers desperate to escape from peak temperatures of about 45 degrees Celsius, or 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

The project faces a number of serious hurdles. Manali is already overdeveloped and, with no airport of its own, it remains awkward to get to even from New Delhi, let alone from abroad.

The nearest airport, Kullu, is 45 minutes away and is served by one small airline, although developers say more companies are set to start flying there. The resort is a 12-hour drive from New Delhi along curvy roads, and there are no large railroad stations nearby.

The group says improvements to the roads are being planned by the state authorities, but admits that at present journey is "difficult but romantic."

More importantly, building such a large-scale resort in the Himalayas is likely to cause tension with environmentalists, who are already concerned about the impact tourism has had in the region. But Sims insisted that ecological sensitivity was a priority for the developers - from both a profit and moral perspective.

"We want to be sure that the development doesn't encourage an ecologically destructive follow-on development," he said. "We are '60s campaigners still - but we want to prove that responsible tourism is profitable."

Sims said environmental issues were increasingly at the forefront of tourists' minds, and that developers were under pressure to recognize their concerns.

"People that pay $500 to $1,000 a night to stay in the resort - some of them may have a brain and a few of them may also have a heart," he said. "We have to build this resort for the next generation of tourists who are going to care about these things.

"In 10 years' time our market is going to demand high standards of environmental awareness."

The group will have to prove their credentials to a skeptical audience in India. Tej Vir Singh, director of the Center for Tourism Research and Development in Lucknow,who has studied the environmental impact of ski resorts, said he had not seen the proposals but in general favored smaller developments.

"There are well-known problems of large-scale resorts which Alpine countries have faced," he said. "We favor building small centers which don't attract too many people and are easily absorbed into the local community."

S.K. Misra, chairman of Intach, a group that campaigns to protect India's cultural heritage, said his organization would assess the plans carefully to decide whether action needed to be taken.

"We don't like such activities to take place at high, unspoiled altitudes," he said. "If something looks like it will damage the environment or cause social problems, then we could take it to court."

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NOTE ABOUT AULI: Auli is good for honeymooners and poeple who are going to try skiing for fun and do not want to learn seriously. Auli slopes are not good as compared to Solang Valley, Narkanda and Gulmarg but Auli is having good infrastrcuture as compared to Solang Valley and Narkanda.

Snow Lion Expeditions blames economy for its failure to pay trek leader - Oregon residents Anne Uzzell and Eric Ronemus are furious that a Salt Lake City tour company, Snow Lion Expeditions, left them stranded in Nepal last month, $7,240 poorer.
    The company's owner, Ron Barness, is apologetic but does not know how to rectify the situation. He claims the global credit crisis wiped him out before he could react.
    "I had various sources of capital that vaporized in one week," said Barness, whose company handled logistics for trips to exotic places, such as a recent foray into North Korea. But now it is bound for bankruptcy.
    "We operated inside a growing economy for 17 1/2 years. Once the economy began to retract, we weren't really prepared for it," he said. "I have shareholders who were unable or unwilling to help the organization. I wasn't able to help. I put all the capital I have into the company. I refinanced my house three times. We were caught inside of a perfect storm where the source of the capital dried up and we were unable to finance our organization going forward."
    When the bottom fell out, Barness had several tour groups in Asia, including the "Everest Close Up" group that included Uzzell and Ronemus of Central Point, Ore.
    The duo flew on their own into Kathmandu on Oct. 8, were greeted at the airport by their expedition leader and taken to a hotel, where they met five fellow trekkers.

How  is this legal?" she questioned. "It is an utter outrage and injustice to us as human beings and a downright embarrassment that this company is doing business as an ambassador of the United States."Only then, said Uzzell, did the local ground operator inform them that Snow Lion had not paid him for their trip. He couldn't do it for nothing, and Snow Lion already owed him money.
    The trekkers had a choice: Go home, or pay the local operator to take them. "After a night of mulling over these two very extreme options, all seven of us paid [the local operator] to provide the same itinerary previously booked and for which we had already paid in full," she said.
    Uzzell is angry, saying Barness let them fly halfway around the world without telling them about his financial woes, then used the economic crisis as a scapegoat.
    "The bottom line is he took a whole lot of money from us and it didn't go to where it was supposed to. I don't know what became of the money," she said. Her one consolation is the couple had bought trip insurance in case of altitude-induced medical problems - and the policy had a provision for cancellations.
    Still, Uzzell worries that Snow Lion's Web site gives no indications the company is out of business and that other travelers could lose money. She is considering filing a complaint with the state Division of Consumer Protection, but had not done so Tuesday. A division spokesman said he was aware of the matter, though had not been notified formally by Snow Lion customers.
    Barness said he is not taking new reservations. "We're essentially out of business. This is a really sad story. We've served 3,000 people in 17 years and had a wonderful track record."
    Those clients include Olivia Agraz and husband Jess, the former Salt Lake City commissioner. They took the Snow Lion-sponsored trip to North Korea in August and earlier used the company for a customized trek through southeast Asia.
    "We always thought they were a great company," she said. "I really feel bad for Ron because he tries so hard to make everybody happy. He's a victim of the times we're going through now."
    That perspective doesn't sit well with Amanda Bronson, 33, of Sacramento, who paid more than $5,000 and "dreamed of hiking in the Himalayas for 10 years," only to be left hanging with Uzzell and the others.

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