Buddhism, India's gift to Steve Jobs

Like it has done to so many icons across the world, India was the source of spirituality to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who later converted to Buddhism.

Jobs had taken a "spiritual retreat to India" and "traversing through the country had sparked Jobs' conversion to Buddhism," a CNN report said.

Jobs had travelled to India in the late 1970s, with money he had saved working as a technician at a video games manufacturer in the US.

He reportedly visited the Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed College friend Daniel Kottke in search of spiritual enlightenment.

Born in 1955 in San Francisco, Jobs grew up amid the rise of hippie counter-culture. Bob Dylan and the Beatles were his two favourite musical icons and he shared their political leanings and anti-establishment views.

"Like the Beatles, Jobs took a spiritual retreat to India and regularly walked around his neighbourhood and the office barefoot," the CNN report said.