Almost four weeks after arriving in Boston, we have finally made it to Bilaspur! The trip was long and difficult, due to our heavy pile of luggage, but we'll only have to do that once more on the way out.

We started on Wednesday afternoon, taking a cab to the bus station, where a number of coolies (porters) started trying to charge us ridiculous rates to move our luggage a few feet. Unfortunately, we didn't know where our luggage was supposed to go, where to load in onto the bus, etc., and we ended up paying them more than we paid the taxi driver for the 10km air-conditioned ride. The sitution was made difficult because of my whiteness, which identified me as "rich," or at least able to afford their inflated rates.

The bus ride started out well enough. It wasn't AC, but it was comfortable, and the open windows provided enough of a breeze. However, after a couple hours, the driver started letting on more people than the bus could hold, and as best we could tell was pocketing the extra money. This meant the once comfortable bus was now overcrowded, and I was getting face fulls of butts and bellys. The driver also got into fights with a number of the passengers along the way.

India does not have the equivalent of our interstate highway system, so many of the roads were small and bumpy. At around 4 AM we drove down a road that has to hold the record for worst potholes, as every few minutes we would slow down and drive over a huge bump or hole, jarring me from my sleep.

After fighting with more coolies and cab drivers, we made it from the Nagpur bus station to the Nagpur rail station (where even more coolies "helped" us to the platform). Credit goes to Dolly and her language skills for dealing with these agressive men as well as she did. As the early morning sun rose, Dolly once again made things easier by finding the air conditioned waiting room for the "upper class" passengers, where we escaped from the heat for the few hours we waited for the train.

We were in a 3-tier AC sleeper car, where it was cool and comfortable once we dragged our luggage in. We were hungry as neither of us had eaten much due to earlier intenstinal difficulties, and we were tired, but we played cards and slept and watched the other passengers.

The train took two hours longer than scheduled to arrive in Bilaspur due to construction delays, and by the time we got there we were exhausted. Luckily, JSS has a van, and two of the members met us and helped with our luggage, and brought us to a hotel where we arrived about 30 hours after we started our journey. We will be staying here for a few days until Jacob cleans his house - and we will stay there until an apartment is found in the colony where Jacob and the doctors stay.

We ordered a huge meal from room service, and Jacob came to meet us. After he had left, the boy working as the bellhop came with the bill. When he left for change, he left the door slightly ajar, which I did not notice at the time. When he returned, the door to the bathroom where Dolly was showering was open, and so I ran to the door to stop him before he came in too far. In doing so, I slipped on the wet floor, wiping out completely, and taking out a chair on the way down. I'm pretty sure that I heard him laugh a little while I was in midair.