Here’s The Amazing Story Of A Man Who Found His Mother After 25 Years Using Google Earth

You know one of those moments when you see a movie and you get extremely overwhelmed and then the excitement drops because you realise that this can’t happen in real life? Well, something unbelievable has happened and it will give you all the Karan-Arjun feels.

Saroo Munshi Khan, who was five years old when he got lost, found his mother after 25 years by using Google Earth from his new home in Tasmania.

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Saroo was 5 years old when he was travelling with his brother, working as a sweeper on Indian trains. He got tired and took a nap on one of the benches on the railway station. When he woke up, he couldn’t find his brother anywhere.

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He then saw a train in front of him and got inside that in order to find his brother. After some time, he fell asleep and woke up after 14 hours to discover that he has reached Kolkata.

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There, he started begging to survive and was later taken in by an NGO which put him up for adoption. He was adopted by the Brierleys, a couple from Tasmania.

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Although, Saroo settled well in his new home, the desire to meet his birth family never died. From the little information he could recollect from his childhood, he started tracing the place 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 said. He drew a circle with the same radius keeping Kolkata in the centre and discovered a small village called Khandwa.

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“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,” said Saroo.

 

Soon, he reached Khandwa and located his house. But there was a lock on it. When he asked about his family around, one of his neighbours took him to his mother.

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When Saroo met his mother, he didn’t recognise her. “The last time I saw her she was 34 years old and a pretty lady, I had forgotten that age would get the better of her. But the facial structure was still there and I recognised her and I said, ‘Yes, you are my mother.’

 

Saroo’s mother had feared that her son would have been dead, but a fortune teller told her that he’s alive and will come to meet her one day. That gave her the energy to live to see her son.

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Unfortunately, Saroo’s brother had died by falling from a train few months after Saroo went missing.

But that night, Saroo went to bed after actually meeting his birth mother. “It has taken the weight off my shoulders. I sleep a lot better now,” he said. 

After getting to know his story, Google Earth even made a short film documenting his journey. You can watch it here,

It is such a heart-warming story! 🙂

News Source: BBC

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