Goodbye Central Asia

It is time to leave Central Asia. Of course, my prepaid taxi driver is not answering his cell phone so I may have to stay here a few more months. My Kyrgyz friends told me not to worry, they will take good care of me. Oh well, the hotel arranged a different taxi for me. I leave the hotel in 30 minutes, at 12:30 in the morning to catch my 3:10AM flight to Istanbul (who scheduled this flight at such a horrible time?). The flight is six hours long and then I have an eight hour layover in Istanbul (hmmm ... check into a hotel to sleep or go to the city? ... hard choice). Then I have a 3.5 hour flight to Paris, a taxi from the Orly airport to the CDG airport, a nice overnight sleep in the airport hotel, and then an 8.5 hour flight to Newark.