George Harrison: The India Selfies (1966)

In September 1966 George Harrison and his wife Pattie flew out of London and landed in India. George had booked a course of sitar lessons with the great Ravi Shankar, and yoga classes.  Under the names Mr and Mrs Sam Wells, the Harrisons booked  into Bombay’s Taj Mahal Hotel.

In George Harrison – Anthology, the Beatles guitarist noted:

“I went to India in September 1966. When I had first come across a record of Ravi Shankar’s I had a feeling that, somewhere, I was going to meet him. It happened that I met him in London in June, at the house of Ayana Deva Angadi, founder of the Asian Music Circle. An Indian man had called me up and said that Ravi was going to be there…. So in September, after touring and while John was making How I Won the War, I went to India for about six weeks. First I flew to Bombay and hung out there. Again, because of the mania, people soon found out I was there. I stayed in a Victorian hotel, the Taj Mahal, and was starting to learn the sitar. Ravi would give me lessons, and he’d also have one of his students sit with me. My hips were killing me from sitting on the floor, and so Ravi brought a yoga teacher to start showing me the physical yoga exercises.

“It was a fantastic time. I would go out and look at temples and go shopping. We travelled all over and eventually went up to Kashmir and stayed on a houseboat in the middle of the Himalayas. It was incredible. I’d wake up in the morning and a little Kashmiri fellow, Mr Butt, would bring us tea and biscuits and I could hear Ravi in the next room, practising…”

 

 

Via: Shooting Film, ArtSheep