India's luxury goods industry is reeling from the recent terror attacks in Mumbal. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, a luxury hotel, was one of the main focuses of the attack and it is also home to luxury boutiques from Louis Vuitton, Bulgari and Fendi. The Oberoi Trident Hotel, which was also under attack, houses other luxury brands including Salvatore Ferragamo. It has been reported that some of Ferragamo's employees were held hostage. The sieges by Islamist militants, which have left 120 dead and hundreds more injured, focused on wealthy foreigners.

Luxury brands have increasingly looked to India as a growing source of revenue over the last couple of years. The International Herald Tribune had planned its annual luxury conference at the Imperial Hotel, New Delhi, from Dec. 2-4 but that has now been postponed. While most experts don't see a big long-term impact on luxury markets in India after the attacks some do feel that brands may be more cautious about investing in India in the short term.

The Times of London has come up with a new list of the world's 10 richest streets based on property prices. The most expensive street on the globe, unsurprisingly, is in ultra-rich Monaco - Avenue Princess Grace, to be exact, where average prices run about $17,000 per sq. ft. It's a pretty safe bet that anyone with an address there is a millionaire at the very least. In second place is Severn Road in Hong Kong's Victoria Peak district (above), where the average price is about $11,000 per sq. ft. Here are the rest of the runners-up:
No. 3 - Fifth Avenue, New York
No. 4 - Kensington Palace Gardens, London
No. 5 - Avenue Montaigne, Paris
No. 6 - Ostozhenka, Moscow
No. 7 - Via Suvretta, St, Mortiz, Switzerland
No. 8 - Carolwood Drive, Beverly Hills
No. 9 - Wolseley Road, Sydney, Australia
No. 10 - Altamount Road, Mumbai, India

On September 18, Sotheby's will auction 118 lots of rare (and rarely at auction) Indian and Southeast Asian paintings, miniatures and objects. The group is expected to fetch a total of between $2.3 and $3.2 million. Sotheby's has experienced unusually high prices for traditional Indian art in recent years, as economic growth in India appears exponential, and young collectors turn from modern pieces to those artists' historical roots.

One highly anticipated lot is a museum-quality illustration that depicts a pair of ardent lovers, Krishna and Radha, characters from a 12th century poem. The illustration, seen above thanks to ArtDaily, is estimated at between $200,000 and $300,000.

Pratham USA was started in 1994 by UNICEF, with the goal to educate the children of India in the areas of reading writing and basic math. Based on the principal that children who attend school make more productive members of society and are less likely to fall into poverty, Pratham works by improving India's schools instead of replacing them or imposing new ways of life. Recently Google awarded a $2 million grant to Pratham to assist their efforts! Check out the amazing work this organization is doing here.

Another proof of India's growing economic power is the success story of Cox & Kings. The British travel company was founded in 1758 for officers serving in India. The company will be conducting their IPO on the Bombay Stock Exchange next month. In order to make this stock offering possible the UK parent company of Cox & Kings had to be taken over by its Indian subsidiary. The company plans to raise $130 million in the IPO.

What's even more interesting is that Cox & Kings has entered into a partnership with the state-owned Indian Railways to build a luxury Orient Express-style train. The train will travel from Mumbai and Rajasthan across to Varanasi and Kolkata. Right now India currently has only two luxury trains, and they only travel within single states. In an article in the Telegraph, Peter Kerka, the chief executive of Cox & Kings said that while seven years ago the bulk of Cox & Kings' UK business involved shipping passengers from Britain to India. Today more Indian families are taking vacations all over their country. The company plans to increase its travel franchises in India from 15 to 300 by the end of 2008.

There's a certain fascination to "cursed" gemstones. In the U.S. we have the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian, now in London at the Natural History Museum's gemstone exhibit "The Vault," the cursed Delhi Purple Sapphire is going on display. The amethyst stone has lingered in the archives of the museum for years. Unlike the Hope Diamond the amethyst isn't exceptionally rare or pricey but the curse is a fascinating story.

The Times reports that around 34 years ago, Peter Tandy, a curator at the museum, found the stone in the mineral cabinets. it was set in a silver ring decorated with astrological symbols and mystical words with two scarab-carved gems attached. A note, written by Edward Heron-Allen, the amethyst's last owner, said that it carried a curse. He was so disturbed by the stone that he surrounded it with protective charms and sealed it in seven boxes before leaving it to the musuem. The legend goes that the purple stone was brought to the UK by a Bengal cavalryman Colonel W Ferris after being looted from the Temple of Indra in Cawnpore , now Kanpur in 1857. The soldier lost his money and health and the same happened to his son when he inherited it. A family friend who owned it for a while committed suicide. Heron-Allen got the stone in 1890 and suffered misfortunes, he gave the stone away twice and it caused misfortune both times including causing a singer to lose her voice. He was even said to have thrown it in a canal only to have it come back to him later through a dealer who bought it from a dredger. In 1904 he had enough and shipped it to his bankers saying it was to be locked away until after his death.

The curse has even stretched into modern times. Seven years ago John Whittaker, former head of micropalaeontology at the Natural History Museum, took the amethyst to the first annual symposium of the Heron-Allen Society. On the way home he was caught in a huge thunderstorm. A the second symposium he was sick with a stomach bug and on the third symposium he got a kidney stone.

It seems to me that the logical way to stop the curse would be to return it to the temple it came from but that wouldn't make for such an interesting story now would it?

We first became familiar with Mukesh Ambani when we saw the picture of his planned billion-dollar skyscraper home. It turns out that Ambani, who we already knew as the richest man in India is now said to be the richest man in the entire world skating past Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and fellow builder of blockbuster homes, Lakshmi Mittal. BloggingStocks took a look at the actions of the top five reporting that Gates and Buffett are also the world's biggest philanthropists and that Slim has also pledged a desire to set up a $10 billion foundation. Mittal is busy buying up the world's steel production. Ambani is the chairman of Reliance Industries and his businesses include petrochemicals, oil refining, textiles, retail and biotechnology. Thus far his efforts on behalf of his fellow man just might be limited to subsidizing the 600 staff his new home is said to require.

This fall there seem to be more famous jewels hitting the auction block than usual. As part of the same sale that will auction off Marie Antoinette's pearls on December 12 in London, Christie's will be auctioning off pieces that belonged to Anita Delgado, a Spanish dancer who became the fifth wife of the Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala. In a story fit for a romance novel, Delgado, born in Malaga, Spain in 1890, was seen by the Maharaja in a crowd of onlookers of the marriage King Alfonso XIII in 1906 in Madrid. The smitten Maharaja attended Delgado's dance performances in a cafe and married her in 1907. She became the Maharani of Kapurthala and they had one son, Ajit Singh, in 1908. The couple divorced in 1925. The jewels were left to her son who eventually sold them to the current owners.

There are eight pieces total which exemplify fine Art Deco styles. The piece shown here an emerald, diamond and rock crystal necklace, is estimated to sell for over $200,000.

[via France24.com]

The latest wild watches from Angular Momentum are designed to attract Indian consumers. The watches feature colorful and amazingly detailed portraits of the Lords of India such as Ganesha (shown above), Rama, Shiva, Lakshmi, Krishna and more in the style of the today's street poster painting.Each one is hand painted on the reverse of a sapphire watch dial. Check out the full collection after the jump.

The rather chunky India Tower seeks to be the greenest skyscraper in India. The India Tower is a 60-story tower in Mumbai. The developer is aiming to get a LEED gold rating for the project. The tower's odd patched- together look was created by FXFOWLE architects and comes as a response to the three-acre site, the building's requirements and its mixed use. Each chunk of the tower has a different use, separating out retail, a Park Hyatt hotel and serviced apartments, and long-lease and duplex penthouse condominium apartments. The tower will use sustainable systems such as solar shading, natural ventilation, rainwater harvest and the use of green materials.

The tower's three-story podium will include restaurants, retail stores, a fitness club and a nightclub. The Park Hyatt will have a Sky Lobby (floors 30-35) with the hotel residences beneath on floors 14-28. The long-lease apartments will be located on levels 38 through 50 and levels 52 to 59 will be home to duplex penthouse condominium apartments with panoramic views. Construction is underway and should be done in 2010.

Travel + Leisure has released their World's Best Awards 2007 winners and the top hotel is the Oberoi Udaivilas in Udaipur, India. They were ranked the best hotel in the world with the highest overall score of 94.36. The palace hotel on the banks of Lake Pichola and is reached via boat. The resort includes fountains, pavilions, pools and balconies and is also home to a lavish luxury spa. The hotel includes 63 Premier rooms, 19 superior Premier rooms with a semi-private moated pool, and three luxury suites with a private infinity pools, tented dining pavilions and a view of the City Palace horizon. The most lavish suite is the Kohinoor Suite with 2,650 square feet of space includes fountained courtyards, a large private pool, sitting room with real fireplaces, and a master suite with its own wooden sauna.

Now this is a story of real estate excess, India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building himself a skyscraper in Mumbai as his personal residence. The building, which is the size of a 60-story tower, will only have 27 floors due to the height of the ceilings. Ambani, who is the richest man in India, has a personal fortune of over $20 billion.The home will house his wife, mother, three children and 600 live-in staff. What to do with all those floors? The first six are garage space, a health club will be on the next two and then staff housing will take up much of the middle section. Ambani and his family will live on the upper floors which will be topped with a helipad and swimming pools. The home reportedly will cost $1 billion to create and construction is already under way. It should be finished next year.

[Thanks, Shaun K]

Flying from London to India just got a lot more comfortable. Jet Airways has created a service that is basically like having a small cabin to yourself for the flight The 26 square foot room has two seats that convert into an 83-inch bed, dining for two and a 23-inch flat screen TV. The cabin has a pair of sliding doors for privacy. Meals are served on porcelain dinnerware. To fly from London to Mumbai in your own cabin costs £4,421.10 and the first luxury flight on one on Jet Airways' Boeing 777-300ER aircraft takes off from Heathrow on May 5. You can see more pictures in the article on This Is London.

The aptly named Remote Lands, Inc is now offering private jet journeys as a unique way to see the world. The first of these packages, called "Passionate Epicures and Insatiable Travelers," is available this year and will have room for a cozy 36 guests and is scheduled to travel to Thailand, Burma, Bhutan, India and China. Attractions include not only the locations themselves, but also best-selling authors, world-renowned chefs, and cultural experiences like attending a Thai wedding and visiting the home of a Bhutan dignitary.

Or if that sounds a little too generic for your taste, maybe a "bespoke travel package" is a better fit. Remote Lands will design an individualized Asian vacation just for you, basing it on your particular preferences and lifestyle, and offer choices including everything from bodyguards and massage therapists to audiences with Asian nobility.

A few days ago I brought you news of the Baroda Pearls, the very pricey strand of pearls that is part of the property of the royal Gaekwad family of Baroda. The Times of India has a fascinating story about another royal jewel that was part of the same treasure, the Star of the South. The Star of the South is a 128.8 carat diamond which was discovered by a slave woman in a Brazil mine in 1853. Back then it was sold for just $3,000 and passed through various hands before it was cut into a cushion stone with a light pinkish-brownish hue. The stone, which is now valued at around $94 million, has been bought by Cartier according to a new book, "After Ambassadors, Before Dukes" by author KRN Swamy. Swamy dedicates an entire chapter `The Most Flamboyant Maharani' to Sita Devi, the second wife of Maharaja Pratapsinh Gaekwad. Sangramsinh, the youngest son of Pratapsinh, has been claiming that the Star of the South is among the heirlooms that is under dispute and was in possession of the palace. The jewelry world had lost track of the diamond for a while and it is believed that Cartier bought it from Rustomjee Jamsetjee of Mumbai in 2002. Now, according to the article, Sangramsinh's lawyer Kailash Jethmalani says that they are "tracing the route through which the diamond reached Cartier and are examining possible legal action."