Indian Boy Lost For 25 Years

A long way home: Remarkable tale of Indian boy who was accidentally transported 1,000 miles from home aged four and found his way back 25 years later thanks to Google Earth

• Saroo Brierley got lost while riding the train with his brother in rural India
• He found himself 1,000 miles away in Calcutta, where begged to survive
• Eventually, he was taken to an orphanage and adopted by Australians
• But 25 years later, he found his way back home after poring over Google 
• He has now retold his story in a new book that was published this week

By Damien Gayle

Published: 16:42 GMT, 25 June 2014 | Updated: 20:44 GMT, 25 June 2014

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Saroo before he went missing: In a new book he tells the story of how he got lost a thousand miles from home, then found his way back 25 years later

An Indian man who was lost riding the train aged four then adopted by parents and moved to Australia, only to be reunited with his birth mother 25 years later, has retold his incredible story in a new book.

Saroo Brierley from Hobart, Australia, was just another poor boy growing up in rural India, until he accidentally leapt aboard a train that took him a thousand miles away to a strange city.

Alone, unable to speak the language, and with no knowledge of where he'd come from, he had to beg to survive until he was rescued by an orphanage and adopted by an Australian family.

From then on, he grew up an Australian and enjoyed success in his adoptive country. But he was unable - and unwilling - to forget the land of his childhood.

Determined to rediscover his past he embarked on a virtual odyssey of his homeland and, after many hours poring over Google Earth, he managed recognise his home town - and track down his mother.

Their reunion in 2012 made headlines across the world, but now he has told his full story in a new book, A Long Way Home, published this week.

Like many children growing up in rural India, Saroo rarely had enough to eat and would often travel on trains to beg for scraps with his older brother.

But during one ill-fated trip he stopped for a doze at the station with his brother and when he woke up he found that he was alone. 

'I opened my eyes and couldn't see my brother, but I saw a train in front of me with the door open and for some reason I thought he was on board,' he said.

'I ran over and jumped on the train just as the doors closed and pulled out of the station, and it was only then that I realised he wasn't there. I think you could say that split-second decision changed my life forever.'

Not finding his brother aboard the train, Saroo simply stayed on the train as it made its 1,000 mile journey across the country from Khandwha, Madhya Pradesh, to Calcutta (now Kolkata).

He has previously told how he spent a month trying to find his way back, almost drowning in the River Ganges and nearly being abducted by a man who intended to sell him as a slave.

 

Finally, Saroo was rescued from the city streets and put into a juvenile home. Unable to tell carers even where he'd come from, he was transferred to an orphanage, where he was adopted by an Australian couple.

He ended up moving to Tasmania where he started a new life with a loving family. He eventually earned a bachelor's degree in business management and joined his adoptive family's engineering firm.

But he never gave up hope that he might one day get back to his roots, but with no idea what it was called it seemed an impossible dream.

'I kept in my head the images of the town I grew up in, the streets I used to wander and the faces of my family, I treasured those memories,' he told the Tasmania Mercury.

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Emotional: Saroo's reunion with his mother, 25 years after he got lost riding the train with his older brother

Determined, he spent years looking at maps for signs of the landmarks that he knew as a child and eventually he turned to Google Earth.

Saroo remembered travelling for around 14 hours in the train to Kolkata. Estimating the speed of the train to be about 50mph, he calculated that his hometown could be around 1,000 miles from Kolkata.

Saroo then drew a circle on a map with Kolkata at the centre. In an interview with NPR, Saroo described how he singled out his town.

He said: 'I thought to myself, "Well, the first thing you're gonna see before you come to your home town is the river where you used to play with your brothers, and the waterfall, and the architecture of this particular place where you used to visit quite a lot." It has to be exactly the same, otherwise, if it's not, I'd just fly over and go somewhere else.'

'When I found it, I zoomed on it and bang, it just came up. I navigated it all the way from the waterfall where I used to play,' Saroo told the BBC.

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Magic moment: Mr Brierley pictured with his mother, Fatima Munshi, when they met for the first time in 25 years

But even after he spotted what he believed to be the town where he had spent his earliest years, it took months for Saroo to organise a trip to test out his theory. 

And when he finally did reach his old home in the town of Ganesh Talai, it was empty.

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Mr Brierley's book, A Long Way Home, was published this week by Penguin Australia

'I just thought the worst, I thought perhaps everyone's gone, my whole family's died, they've passed away,' he told NPR.

It was then that he had another stroke of luck, as locals began to approach him and ask him his business. 

He told them his names, and the names of his mother and siblings, and he soon found someone who was able to help.

Saroo went on: 'By the time the fourth person had come, they said, "Just stay here for a sec," and within 10 minutes they came back around and they said, "Now I'm going to take you to your mother."'

He followed the person just a few yards around a corner, to where three ladies stood at the entrance to a house. One of them was his mother, Fatima.

'I looked at the second one and I thought, 'There's something about you' - and it took me a few seconds but I decrypted what she used to looked like,' he said.

'She looked so much shorter than I remembered when I was a four-year-old child. 

'But she walked forward, and I walked forward, and my emotions and tears and the chemical in my brain, you know, it was like a nuclear fusion.'

Mr Brierley's book, A Long Way Home, was published this week by Penguin Australia.