Their bus arrived in Chinatown just before 4 a.m., almost 24 hours late.
These folks left North Carolina on Monday, unaware they were embarking on a trip full of misery.
The passengers were left stranded on the side of the road with no help in sight, dealing with the extreme heat and very few options.
Some missed work, others got sick and one passenger even missed his grandmother's funeral.
It started when the bus broke down in Virginia, sending passengers fleeing as smoke billowed through the bus. Some were even taken to the hospital.
"We had no transportation, the bus was our transportation," passenger Bashir Joseph said. "You know, none of us had our cars, and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere. We didn't know where anything was."
The driver apparently tried to keep going after the bus started shaking and smoking, but passengers say they begged him to stop.
"It was hot," passenger Minnie Taylor said. "Hot air was blowing out. It wasn't even cold air, it was hot air. And the smoke, as soon as we saw the smoke, we knew we just had to get off the bus."
The Red Cross had to step in and put the riders up at a hotel, and a food bank provided the food. Finally, a Greyhound bus picked them up and brought them to New York City.
(Earlier we reported the company of the bus as Go Bus, however that is not the actual company name.)
