Here I am, back in the Dushanbe Serena with BBC on in the background and several cups of coffee keeping me more or less awake. The trip over was smooth and uneventful, although somehow I managed to completely miss Natalie and David in the layover at IST. I waited for them to arrive on the buses from the tarmac to the arrivals gate and even hung out at their gate for 30 minutes, but didn't see them at all. Still trying to figure out how that happened.
IST is a nice enough airport, much smaller than DXB (duh). I picked up some baklava for my PE colleagues and read a lot of The Honourable Schoolboy, which I've already almost finished. Maybe 20 pages left. Flying into Dushanbe at night is like looking at the most fabulous night sky you've ever seen through a thick black sheet with patches cut out here and there. The lights are uniformly white pinpricks, very different from the diversity of lights you see flying into a first-world city at night: headlights and taillights, neon signs, stop lights, yellow street lamps. In between the concentrated explosions of pinpricks Dushanbe is dark as anything. Quite a nice sight, actually.
Istanbul is a better stopover than Dubai because there's no killer 12- or 13-hour leg; IAD-IST is less than nine hours. But the downside is that it's back-to-back redeyes. Finally got into my room about 6:30 AM local time, 10 hours ahead of DC, and then rested my eyes and slept alternately for about 3.5 hours. I fear the jet lag is going to be rough tonight. But right now, time to raise someone at the office and make my way over there.
IST is a nice enough airport, much smaller than DXB (duh). I picked up some baklava for my PE colleagues and read a lot of The Honourable Schoolboy, which I've already almost finished. Maybe 20 pages left. Flying into Dushanbe at night is like looking at the most fabulous night sky you've ever seen through a thick black sheet with patches cut out here and there. The lights are uniformly white pinpricks, very different from the diversity of lights you see flying into a first-world city at night: headlights and taillights, neon signs, stop lights, yellow street lamps. In between the concentrated explosions of pinpricks Dushanbe is dark as anything. Quite a nice sight, actually.
Istanbul is a better stopover than Dubai because there's no killer 12- or 13-hour leg; IAD-IST is less than nine hours. But the downside is that it's back-to-back redeyes. Finally got into my room about 6:30 AM local time, 10 hours ahead of DC, and then rested my eyes and slept alternately for about 3.5 hours. I fear the jet lag is going to be rough tonight. But right now, time to raise someone at the office and make my way over there.
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