Editor’s Note: Saroo Brierley was born in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, India. He lives in Hobart, Tasmania. At the age of five, Saroo got lost in India and, unable to read or write or recall the name of his hometown or even his own last name, he survived alone for weeks on the rough streets of Calcutta before ultimately being transferred to an agency and adopted by a couple in Australia. His memoir, A Long Way Home, recounts his life thus far – and his journey to the land in which he was born. For Biographile's That Summer series, in which authors share personal stories on the summers that shaped them or their subjects, Saroo takes us to the moment he boarded a plane to return to India.

It was the summer month of February in Australia, when I decided to go on the journey of a lifetime – one of self-discovery – to validate what I had found on Google Earth a year earlier. I remember being at the airport with my mother and girlfriend feeling indecisive, excited, scared, unsure at times whether to take the bull by the horns and get on that plane that would transport me to India for the first time.

Logically one wouldn’t think twice of going and unloading the weight off my shoulders, a weight that had been enduring for thirty years. I was longing to find my identity and answer all the burning questions about my previous life and biological family. The action of giving my boarding pass to the air hostess stated I had made my mind up and the fear of the unknown became a little less fearful. I had already achieved the presumably unachievable.

After being in the air for twelve hours of my fifteen-hour flight to India, I had a mental and emotional meltdown. The thought of finding my family and seeing them for the first time triggered tears that welled in my eyes; fortunately for me I didn’t have anyone sitting next to me and was able to release and diffuse the emotions overtaking me. I was only hours away from the moment of truth. Mum told me not to have any expectations, because emotions and thoughts can bring you down in a place with which you are unfamiliar, where you don’t speak the language, don’t know the people — where there are dangers lurking around corners. I was fighting with this and my own personal thoughts. I had validated my existence on this earth and proven I could conquer anything. This was a time of consolidating my abilities, which now seemed limitless. I had learned many of the secrets to finding confidence, which has many ingredients, and I used these ingredients as I hoped to see the town where I was born and lived in for the five years before I got lost. I was soon there with a chance to find my lost family, which I had never forgotten.

I managed to find my home town only a day after my arrival, its architecture and features stood just as I had remembered them. Soon, without even realizing, I was on autopilot and my legs were taking me through the streets I once walked twenty-five years ago as a four year old and, moments later, the miracle happened. I was looking at the woman who birthed me, washed me, and had tried to raise me against all adversity. Time stood still and my senses and brain chemicals were in a state of a nuclear fusion. I didn’t recognize her straightaway but as my eyes decrypted her facial features from my twenty-five-year-old memory, I knew the woman who stood before me was Kamla, my mother. A pivotal summer, indeed.

Find more in our That Summer series here.

Inspired to share your own summer experience? Submit your story to Paste’s That Summer writing contest by July 23rd for a chance to win a book bundle and an Out-of-Print t-shirt.