According to George Harrison's recollection in his autobiography, "I, Me, Mine", the visit he made to India in 1974 was his first since 1968, when the Beatles had studied Transcendental Meditation at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in Rishikesh. The main purpose of the 1974 trip was to attend a Vedic ceremony in honour of Ravi Shankar's new home in Benares and to film the event. Accompanied by his friend and fellow musician Gary Wright, Harrison first went to Calcutta in early January before travelling to Benares; there, he and Shankar formulated the concept for Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India and an ensuing joint tour of North America at the end of the year. Harrison and Shankar then travelled to the Hindu holy city of Vrindavan, where Harrison was inspired to write the devotional song "It Is 'He' (Jai Sri Krishna)". Later in the trip, while in Bombay, he wrote another new composition, "Simply Shady".