16 March 2012

UC man finds his way home after 25 years with Google Maps

| johnboy
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Gizmodo has the touching tale of the University of Canberra’s Saroo Brierly long quest to find his family in India:

The details of what happened after Brierley and his brother got off of that train are sparse, but the few glimpses we get aren’t happy ones. Over about a month of searching, he almost drowned in the Ganges river, and was nearly abducted and sold into slavery. At some unspecified point, his brother passed away.

Eventually, Brierley was found and declared a “lost child.” He was adopted by an Australian couple, who reared him an ocean away from his homeland. He studied at University of Canberra, and now owns a shop in Tasmania. But he never stopped looking for his family.

About 10 years ago, Brierley began using the Internet to find his original home, with little to go on but vivid memories from his childhood. Recently, he turned to Google Earth to try to find a match for his mind’s eye. Last month, he finally found one.

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Zeital said :

if you read the story and then read all the comments its sad to see just how many people say he could have done something better/different to get home. kinda sicking.

That’s the main problem with the internet, it’s full of Hindsight Experts.

I seriously doubt I’d be able to piece together many memories from when I was 5 like that. Considering he was begging, no doubt oblivious to a world outside his own and probably reasonably uneducated at the time of those memories he’s done a pretty remarkable job.

if you read the story and then read all the comments its sad to see just how many people say he could have done something better/different to get home. kinda sicking.

cool story and well done to him

The irony being, of course, if they’d had even had money for a payphone (and their parents had access to a phone) back in 1987 none of this would have happened.

Thank you for this. Quite amazing.

Christ we’re lucky in Australia.

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