As Beatles fans around the world mourned the death of George Harrison, his widow and son were reported to have flown to India to scatter his ashes over a sacred river.
Olivia Harrison and Dhani, 23, left Britain on a private jet with friends from the Hare Krishna movement, to which the former Beatle was so committed, for a ceremony at the Yamuna River.
Late last night (Melbourne time) Harrison's family released a statement thanking fans for their outpouring of affection following the 58-year-old's death from cancer last Thursday in Los Angeles: "We are deeply touched... The profound beauty of the moment of George's passing - of his awakening from this dream - was no surprise to those of us who knew how he longed to be with God. In that pursuit, he was relentless."
As a tribute, they would like fans around the world to join them for a minute of meditation at 5:30am Tuesday (Melbourne time).
Harrison had asked that his ashes be taken to India, where the spiritual enlightenment he found in the 1960s sustained him until his death.
As he took his last breaths, his wife, son and two close friends softly chanted Hare Krishna mantras, according to Gauda Chandra Das, of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
As was his wish, Harrison's body was cremated in a cardboard coffin just hours after his death, Annette Lloyd, of funeral parlour Hollywood Forever, said.
No formal ceremony was held.
The reclusive former Beatle had decided early last week that he would die at the Los Angeles home of his friend, "bodyguard-to-the-stars" Gavin De Becker, where his privacy could be assured.
He had feared fans would mob his 120 room Gothic mansion in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, if he had returned to England to die.
Ironically, the town's mayor, Tony Lane, now hopes to turn the home into a Graceland style tourist attraction, "an untarnished, everlasting shrine to George".
Fans gathered in mourning across the world, not just at shrines outside Abbey Road Studios in London and at the Strawberry Fields garden in New York's Central Park dedicated to John Lennon.
At Tokyo's Abbey Road bar, Japanese drank beers and sang Beatles songs as they recalled how the band had electrified their nation in 1966. Bar manager Yukihiro Higashi said Harrison was loved in Japan for his quiet manner.
In the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, politicians and musicians lauded Harrison as a "co-freedom fighter" for helping the nation in its battle for independence from Pakistan.
All Dhaka newspapers ran frontpage photos of Harrison and noted how his 1971 concert in New York's Madison Square Garden alerted the world to the plight of Bangladeshis.
"He was like a path finder for the downtrodden... To us he was a distant relative," said film maker Tarequl Huq Newton.
In Chicago's House of Blues club, musicians including one time Beatles drummer Pete Best and Denny Laine, whose Moody Blues band opened for the Beatles in the 1960s, paid tribute. "I love him. God bless you George," Laine said.
In Liverpool, where the Union Jack is flying at half-mast, fans signed condolence books at the Beatles Story museum, which is run by a former girlfriend. Bernadette Byrne was 17 when Harrison's charm "swept her of her feet" at the Cavern night club.
"He is described as the quiet Beatle but as soon as he got to know you he (had) a wonderful dry sense of humour," she said.
And in London, record label EMI delivered extra copies of Harrison's first solo album, All Things Must Past, when sales rose by 200% as fans sought a lasting memento of Harrison, admired as much as a man as he was a musician.