BBC has an amazing story of how one man used Google Earth to reunite with his long-lost mother after being separated from his family 25 years ago.
Saroo was only five years old when he got lost. He was travelling with his older brother, working as a sweeper on India's trains. "It was late at night. We got off the train, and I was so tired that I just took a seat at a train station, and I ended up falling asleep."
That fateful nap would determine the rest of his life. "I thought my brother would come back and wake me up but when I awoke he was nowhere to be seen. I saw a train in front of me and thought he must be on that train. So I decided to get on it and hoped that I would meet my brother."
Saroo woke up 14 hours later to find himself in faraway Calcutta. He ended up living on the streets, begging and fending for himself, until he was taken in by an orphanage. He was then adopted by a family from Tasmania. As much as Saroo enjoyed his new life, he always dreamed of finding his birth family. He didn't really know where to look, since he was only five and unable to read when he got lost. That fateful nap would determine the rest of his life. "I thought my brother would come back and wake me up but when I awoke he was nowhere to be seen. I saw a train in front of me and thought he must be on that train. So I decided to get on it and hoped that I would meet my brother."
Eventually, he came up with a cool strategy using Google Earth and his childhood memories of the landscape to try to locate places where he might have been born:
"I multiplied the time I was on the train, about 14 hours, with the speed of Indian trains and I came up with a rough distance, about 1,200km."
He drew a circle on a map with its centre in Calcutta, with its radius about the distance he thought he had travelled. Incredibly, he soon discovered what he was looking for: Khandwa. "When I found it, I zoomed down and bang, it just came up. I navigated it all the way from the waterfall where I used to play."
He traveled back to his homeland but found his old house locked up and abandoned. After talking to a neighbor, Saroo was finally reunited with his mother. She too was shocked to see him after all the years, having assumed he'd died long ago.He drew a circle on a map with its centre in Calcutta, with its radius about the distance he thought he had travelled. Incredibly, he soon discovered what he was looking for: Khandwa. "When I found it, I zoomed down and bang, it just came up. I navigated it all the way from the waterfall where I used to play."
Sadly, the brother who'd disappeared on that fateful day had been found dead a month after Saroo went missing, apparently from being run over by a train. Despite the sad news, Saroo feels very grateful to have found his family, saying, "It has taken the weight off my shoulders. I sleep a lot better now."
