Can you imagine being ripped away from the home you grew up in without any warning? Now imagine this happened to your child. As a father and a son, this situation is unthinkable. We know how much home means especially to a child growing up, and this story from our friends at Google strikes right at the heart.

It’s not a story of technology. It’s a story of one man wanting to find the place he called home. Google aptly titled this film “Homeward Bound.”

The story is of a thirty-something business man, Saroo Brierley, who was originally from India, but ended up growing up in Australia. How’d that happen? Well, as a 5 year-old child he fell asleep on a train that at the time wasn’t moving but when he woke up he was in an entirely different place than the world he knew. His home was gone.

Brierley appears to have been raised by a loving family in Australia, but he always dreamed about the place in India he called home. Having only been a small child when he left, memories of scenes from his home and town are all that he had to go on. No names of cities, streets or landmarks. Just visuals.

It wasn’t until he started exploring the world through Google Maps and Google Earth that he started to put those memories to actual locations. My words don’t do this story justice so please take 3 minutes out of your day to be encouraged by the human spirit and the lifelong love most of us have for home in what is an incredible journey.

Like Paul Simon once wrote we all “long to be Homeward Bound.” And here Saroo Brierley was finally able to complete that journey.