I used QGIS’s inbuilt python functionality, PyQGIS. I had the entire OSM database for India at my disposal so I decided that the first and easiest step to undertake was to find all the railway stations that began with ‘B’ and contained ‘p’, ‘u’ and ‘r’. I decided not to use Saroo’s methodology of using a buffer distance from Kolkata. QGIS can load the PBF files natively but the entire of India is a bit of a stretch for it regardless of computing power available.Įvery Railway Station within 1,000km of Kolkata The first items I was interested in were the railway lines and railway stations of India. I downloaded the Protocolbuffer Binary Format (PBF) file of the entire of India. If I was to try and recreate the search for Saroo’s hometown, I would need access to as much free geographical data as possible so I turned to OpenStreetMap and specifically the downloads available from Geofabrik. He started searching methodically outwards from Kolkata to try and find the station that began with ‘B’ and hopefully, then, his hometown that was about an hour away from this. Based on this Saroo calculated that he would have travelled 1,000km in that time. Her father made an educated guess that trains in India in the 1980s travelled at between 70kph-80kph. One friend in particular, Amreen whose father worked for the Indian Railway in New Delhi proved helpful. Based on this, he consulted Indian friends of his at college about how to start searching. He knew he got on the train at a station that sounded like ‘ Berampur‘ and he thought he was on the train for approximately 12-15 hours. Saroo’s methodology started with tracing his steps backwards from Kolkata. In his 20s he begins trying to find his mother and siblings in India by using Google Earth to pinpoint both the town he boarded the train and in turn his hometown. Here, against all odds he survives on the streets and eventually ends up being adopted by (from the sounds of it) a wonderful couple in Tasmania. The young Saroo wakes a little later but can find no trace of Guddu, in his panic he hops on a train looking for Guddu, the doors shut and he (over what he believes to be 12-15 hours) ends up in Kolkata (then Calcutta). Guddu leaves him on a bench in the train station to get some sleep while he goes to work. He was five years old and his brother Guddu had taken him the few hours from home to make some extra money sweeping out trains. In it he recounts his extraordinary life story of getting separated from his brother at a train station whose name began with ‘B’ a few hours from home in rural India in 1987. Recently I finished reading Saroo Brierley’s book, A Long Way Home and titled Lion in the feature film.
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