With Terry as companion, Sangharakshita travelled to India for a farewell tour which lasted four months. He visited many of his old friends and teachers, gave public talks, visited Buddhist pilgrimage sites, and prepared for a permanent return to Britain.

German-born Lama Govinda was a writer, poet, painter and founder of the international Arya Maitreya Mandala, an international Buddhist order. Sangharakshita felt he had found in the Lama a ‘kindred spirit’. Lama Govinda lived in North India with his wife, Li Gotami, an accomplished artist from a Parsi background. Sangharakshita writes affectionately of them both in his memoirs.