(Translated from Bengali)

Shri Durgâ be my Refuge!

BARANAGORE,
26th June, 1889.

DEAR SIR,

For sundry reasons I have been unable to write to you for long, for which please excuse me. I have now obtained news of Gangādhar. He met one of my brother-disciples, and both are now staying in the Uttarakhanda (the sacred Himalayas). Four of us from here are in the Himalayas now, and with Gangādhar they are five. One brother-disciple named Shivānanda came across Gangādhar at Srinagar on the way to holy Kedarnath, and Gangādhar has sent two letters here. During his first year in the Himalayas, he could not secure permission to enter Tibet, but he got it the next year. The Lamas love him much, and he had picked up the Tibetan language. He says the Lamas form ninety per cent of the population, but they mostly practise Tāntrika forms of worship. The country is intensely cold—eatables there are scarcely any—only dried meat; and Gangādhar had to travel and live on that food. My health is passable, but the state of mind is terrible!

Yours etc.,
VIVEKANANDA.