On page 148, the narrator says he didn't have any maps big enough to show the village where he was born. He thought about going to West Bengal and searching "on the ground" until it occurred to him that he could find the village from the comfort of his own home using Google Earth.
Deciding that "'Berampa' was the most solid reference I had," he started to search for places that sounded similar in the West Bengal area. He knew if he saw it, he would recognize it, and from there, he knew his village was just along the train tracks.
Initially, however, it proved too great a task. It is not until he realized that he could calculate how far he had traveled on the train that he began to make progress. Working out that he traveled about 620 miles, he narrowed his search to a territory covering 962,300 square kilometres. From there, he went to the station he arrived before leaving for Australia, Howrah Station, and started working his way down the train line, hoping he would recognize one of the landmarks. On March 31, 2011, he finally found what he was looking for: a small town with an overpass and water tower nearby.
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