We made it!

The last couple days have really been a total blur, but we have arrived safe and sound in Bilaspur. It was a long journey to get to this point emotionally, temporally,... geographically. Of course the biggest news from us is that we already had the opportunity to meet our son, Gaurav! It was surreal! We want to share more about that experience with everyone, but for the time being we really can't share any photos, as we need to have the final written court order before we are his legal guardians. His care givers seem great and have been very accommodating and supportive in helping us through the challenging transition for him. We've visited a few times and are already starting to bond. We have had a few hours of down time here and there, waiting until our court hearing on Friday morning (Thursday night in Wisconsin), so we've decided to do a quick post on the travel. We'll certainly share more information as we are able.

The trip was almost as smooth as we could have hoped, just a few hiccups along the way. And it was long... so long. We are almost, literally, half way around the world from home. We caught the bus to O'hare at about 10:20 AM, Monday, Madison time and got to our hotel around 10:00 AM Wednesday, Bilaspur time. Factor in the 11.5 hour time difference and that makes for right around 36 straight hours of traveling. 3 hours on a bus, 19 hours over three flights, and top it off with a 3 hour car ride from the airport (that was definitely the craziest car trip I've ever taken).

Our transfer at the Delhi airport was definitely the most challenging leg of the trip. We were coming into Delhi from Amsterdam, it was originally scheduled to be about an 8 hour flight when we booked, but it ended up being almost 9.5 hours in the air. Due to the tensions between India and Pakistan, Pakistan airspace is closed and most flights coming into Delhi from the east go right over Pakistan. When we booked we thought we'd have about 4 hour layover to get through immigration and customs, get our luggage, and get checked back in to our last flight, on Air India to Raipur.

With the delay, we only 2.5 hours from touchdown to takeoff, which as it turns out was just barely enough time to get through everything. I'll spare you some of the details, but it was a challenging experience. Immigration was fairly quick but we lost a good chunk of that time at the baggage claim as our luggage was among the last to show. Before we even found our way to the check-in counter, we had to do a quick currency exchange and we had to get through two document check points. Once we got to the check-in line, we realized our baggage was over the weight allowance, so we had to pay a little extra. Which wasn't totally unexpected, except we had to go to a cashier at a different counter to pay the overage fee and then back to the original counter to collect our boarding passes. We finally we got our boarding passes with around 25 minutes to the boarding time. The security line was short, but we got caught there too. At the airports here they have separate men's and women's lines for security. As is typical with the lines women stand it, it was moving much slower, so I had to wait for Leah. We finally get through with maybe a little over 5 minutes to boarding... just enough time to grab a coffee and snack before being almost the last people to board the plane. And funny enough, we were the only white people on the plane and our seat mate got several photos with us (I'm sure we looked great after all the travel...).

So we made it to Raipur, but was probably the craziest leg of the whole trip was still ahead. WACAP assisted us in finding a driver to get us from Raipur to Bilaspur. It ended up being about a three hour car ride. I'm not sure how much anyone knows about driving in India, but the best way I can come up with to describe it is the roads are like 30 foot wide suicide lanes with pedestrians, bikes, autos, motorbikes (often with 3 or 4 people on them), and cows intermixed. And everyone is driving so close you could reach out and touch them. It's really pretty scary, and I basically learned not to spend too much time looking out the front windshield. I just trusted our driver, and all the other drivers on the road and figured we weren't going to hit every oncoming vehicle and cow in the road. Being in the city was one thing, but when we got to the highway it only got wilder. To the best I can tell whoever honks first or flashes their lights has the right of way. There is so much constant honking I couldn't tell where it was coming from. But all these drivers find a way, and I guess India really has a pretty low incidence of crashes. I tried to take some pictures and video, but it does not do it justice, and I'm not a good photographer. I've done some looking on YouTube to try and find a decent video, but, again, none of them really do the experience any justice. Somehow, the way they drive here just works for them.

So we survived it all and are managing pretty well. The jet lag and catching up on sleep has been hard, but getting to spend some time with Gaurav has been helping us get through it. Hopefully more updates will come since everyone is curious, it won't be long and we're going to have our hands full with an active little boy.