"I don't know what to cook. I wish I could cook everything Sukhdev likes," 60-year-old Kaur said in her home village of Makraun Kalan, some 300km miles north of New Delhi.

Singh was freed along with compatriots Tilak Raj and Antaryami, three Kenyans and an Egyptian after a Kuwaiti transport firm that employed them paid a hefty ransom to their captors.

The sleepy hamlet in the northern state of Punjab is counting down for the return of Sukhdev Singh, a 26-year-old trucker who was abducted along with the six others on July 21.

"Everyone is looking at their watches. Everyone is wanting the sun to go down and come up tomorrow when my brother will come home," said the Sikh driver's elder brother, Harvinder Singh.

Strangers greeted journalists like long-lost relatives and everyone spoke of the big party they will hold in Singh's honour.