  Ground based optical observations have yielded considerable information on
the statistics of damped-lyman alpha systems. In particular these systems are
known to be the dominant repository of the observed neutral gas at high
redshift. However, particularly at high redshift, there is the possibility that
optical observations could be biased due to the exclusion of damped-lyman alpha
systems that contain moderate to significant amounts of dust. Independent
observational constraints on the neutral hydrogen content at high redshifts and
the amount of dust in high redshift systems can be obtained from a radio search
against the bright lobes of distant radio galaxies (which is less affected by
the presence of dust in foreground damped-lyman alpha systems). We describe
here a pilot radio survey along the line of sight to a small sample of high
redshift radio galaxies, and also present some preliminary results. The survey
uses a novel observing mode at the WSRT which enables one to make sensitive
searches of a large redshift interval in a modest amount of telescope time.
