The trip of a lifetime...

Our trip began at 3 am. That was the time we had to get up in order to catch our 5:30 flight from Kansas City to Charlotte. That flight lasted a couple of hours, then we immediately hopped on a flight from Charlotte to New York City's JFK airport. We got there at about 11 am. Too early even for the Air India ticket agents. The lanes were closed and unmanned. We waited there for a few hours. As we did, we saw several Indian families enter the ticketing area toting luggage carts overflowing with bags. Together, we waited until Air India opened their desks. We checked in and got on what would be the longest flight of both our lives: 14 hours to New Delhi.

The 777 jet was not even 50 percent full, so soon after we reached out cruising altitude, several passengers unstrapped their safety belts and stretched out the full length across their seats. An Indian lady across from us who looked to be in her seventies laid out soon after dinner with an Air India pillow and blanket and did not wake up for another six hours. Jenna and I made do with our seats and got fitful bursts of rest. The airline served us tandoori chicken and rice pudding for dinner with tea. We also got a snack at around 3 am (a detestable tomato-and-cheese sandwich). We also ate breakfast--eggs and potatoes--as we flew 30,000 feet above Afghanistan. We had a small catalog of old and recent movies to choose from to watch on personal TVs placed in the headrests of the seat in front of us. I watched "Date Night" and "The Dirty Dozen". (The old one with Jim Brown and Lee Marvin.) Jenna watched "The Back Up Plan" with Jennifer Lopez and "Chariots of Fire".

We landed in New Delhi's Indira Ghandi Airport as thick clouds rolled over the damp, humid-looking landscape of the north Gangetic Plain. We could see flooded rice paddies and miles of neat squared-off farmland as we flew in. We stayed in Dehli for another two hours before taking one last flight to Kolkata. On the flight to Kolkata--though it was only two hours--we were served dinner again: curry this time with spicy potatoes. We watched a Bollywood movie with English subtitles. The story was a comedy about a young man who lives in Mumbai and has to take care of his long lost uncle who has suddenly showed up from his ancestral village. The man next to me--an Indian man who had been flying with us since New York--could not stop laughing at the hijinks the uncle kept getting his nephew into. We landed in Kolkata at exactly 10:20 pm local time. We had been traveling for a little more than 30 hours. We had come back to Jenna's own ancestral home, and our adventure was about to begin for real.