Reunited After Decades: A Journey Back Home Through Google Maps

It happened 25 years ago when Saroo, a child from a poor Indian family, was just five years old. "Come, today you're going to work with me," said his brother Guddu, who was a few years older and worked cleaning trains. "I'll start cleaning and you wait here until I'm done. I'll be back soon," Guddu instructed, leaving his younger brother at the train station.

"I remember closing my eyes and falling asleep, but when I woke up, I searched for Guddu everywhere, and he was nowhere to be found," Saroo recalls today. "I began wandering the streets of Calcutta on my own, and a boy who saw me realized I was lost and took me to a shelter for abandoned children."

Since Saroo didn't know which city he came from, and after many days passed without any report of a missing child from his family, he was placed on a waiting list of children awaiting adoption. A few months later, he was adopted by an Australian family and was given a new life, light-years away from the poverty and danger he had once known.

To ease his sharp transition to the new culture, Saroo's adoptive mother made sure to place a large map of India in his room, so he wouldn't forget where he came from. From time to time, she surprised him with gifts related to his culture - a book or Indian food.

When he grew up, Saroo decided it was time to look for his family, and thanks to Google Maps, he realized he could do it more easily and set to work. "I remembered that I lived in the Calcutta area, and I started searching the surrounding places," he says. "Many people thought I was looking for a needle in a haystack, but I never lost hope, even though it was 25 years since I last saw my family."

Day after day, Saroo diligently searched sites using the map, until he finally arrived at a place he recognized. "I saw a bridge that looked similar to the one at the train station where my brother worked, and then I realized that the town I grew up in is Ganesh Talai, near the station.

"I kept having flashbacks from childhood, reminding me of places I'd been and experiences I had. I knew my search wouldn't be in vain, that they had to be somewhere. And I promised myself that when I found them, they wouldn't be poor anymore," he says.

"Finding his family with the help of Google Maps, it was really like a needle in a haystack," says Saroo's biological mother. "But the needle was there, and thanks to his persistence, Saroo succeeded in the mission he set for himself."

"When I met my mother, she was very emotional. She cried and said she tried to look for me, but it never occurred to her that I was no longer in India. She thought I had been kidnapped, and not a day went by without her crying because of it. We both understood that the years that passed wouldn't change what had happened, and I don't see myself going back to live with the family - but at least now she won't have to work anymore."

Since the reunion, Saroo continues to send money to his biological family, slightly easing the lives of his loved ones. In 2015, he even wrote a book about his life story called 'A Long Way Home'.