The airlines keep tweaking the schedules by a few minutes so I need to recheck emails with the itinerary. MSU’s Dieudonne Baributsa oversees many of the logistics for the travel. When he first gave me a proposed travel itinerary, I was surprised that he had us on a flight arriving in Aleppo, Syria at 2:00 in the morning! Pity the Syrian host meeting us -- we will be too jetlagged to know the time. Dieudonne explained that it is common for several flights of travelers to collect throughout the day in a city like Istanbul, Turkey (one of our stops), and then after midnight, flights depart on less traveled routes to places like Aleppo and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. When it is time for us to return to the USA, we will experience the reverse schedule – flights will leave extremely early in the morning, collect larger numbers of travelers in Istanbul and then depart during the day for the USA. My travel path will be Detroit – (1)Amsterdam – (2)Istanbul – (3)Aleppo. Then several days later, Aleppo – Istanbul – (4)Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Some of the layovers in Istanbul are long (10-12 hours) – exhausting, but a chance to get a quick look around Istanbul.
