Istanbul Layover- The Realization
We landed in Istanbul around 9 a.m., running on maybe two hours of sleep in the past 48.
We stepped off the plane and into a world that no longer felt familiar. Languages swirled around us from every direction, none of them recognizable. Women wore styles of dress we had never seen before. For the first time in the trip, we were unmistakably outsiders.
Suddenly every choice over the last few months came rushing back at us. Every worst case scenario suddenly became all too real of a possibility. What if I had uprooted my family and gambled our future on a bad bet?
But the gates behind us had already closed. There was no turning the car around; there was no exit ramp where we could refuel and replan if necessary, run back home for forgotten items. Whatever happened next was going to happen on the other side of the Atlantic ocean.
There was nothing to do but to assess and address the situation in front of us. And that started with the airport itself.
If Part I was about leaving, this was about realizing there was no turning back.
An Endless airport & An Endless layover
This airport is massive. None of us had ever seen anything of this scale. We were both in awe and terrified of getting lost on the way to the bathrooms.
We had a solid 16-hour layover to kill, and of course, no idea where our gate would be until closer to departure.
Exhausted and not functioning at our best, we staked out a corner near the bathrooms and declared it home base. The kids built Legos there, napped there, ate there—we claimed it as our own and weren’t about to give it up.
The downside? Every time we wanted food or drinks, it meant walking what felt like actual miles across the terminal, even with those human conveyor belts.
I wish we’d had a step counter running—pretty sure we did a mini-marathon without realizing it.
Food was our first “international adventure.” Sizes were different, flavors hit our stomachs differently, and my one desperate craving—an American-sized XL soda—was crushed when I realized their “large” was basically our “small.” We also got our first taste of exchanging money and fumbling through language barriers.
Somewhere during that layover we learned another lesson. International airports expect your passport for everything. Food. Currency exchange. Purchases. Existing.
By the second trek across the terminal to retrieve ours, we stopped making that mistake.
This is NOT a road-trip
As we tried to catch up on our lost sleep I had my first true realization of our journey. I have always loved travel, the process, the journey, the sights, sounds and people you see along the way.
What I hadn’t realized until attempting to sleep overnight in an airport was that this kind of travel was nothing like my previous experiences. This was not a road-trip where the worst part was needing to get out to stretch your legs. This was on a whole other level. One that I was no longer sure I was capable of navigating successfully.
Boarding to Ashgabat-The Commitment
As boarding time finally rolled around, I had this delusion that the flight would be half-empty. It was after all going to a country most people had never heard of. Surely the odds were in our favor.
They were not.
It was a packed flight, again.
I tried to get ahead of the stress and asked about Lucky before we lined up. They confirmed he was cleared.
But somehow, they thought we had two dogs, then looked confused when we only produced one. And instead of this being a “good” thing, it somehow became a problem. The airline workers huddled and spoke in languages I did not know, occasionally gesturing back and forth from Lucky to me.
Glimpses of Familiarity among the Foreignness
During these exceptionally tense moments I had the clarity to look around at my fellow passengers. I knew from deduction alone that there were almost certainly future co-workers in amongst the strangers.
Coworkers who were absolutely seeing me and my family at our absolute worst. As my gaze wandered over the crowd I found them— the Americans, the ones out of place in the sea of foreigners. I realized these were the first Americans I had seen in the last 16 hours.
And on the heels of that realization came the fact that we almost certainly stood out even more in the exact same crowd we found ourselves sharing.
But once again, there was no choice to be made except to keep pushing forward. I squared my shoulders, and tried to look “in control” of the situation. Then, knowing I had failed to do so, turned my attention back to the conversations of the airline workers which I knew centered around us.
Just when I thought it was smoothed over— judging by their tones and body language alone, the dreaded “muzzle” conversation came back. Cue my stomach dropping.
To their credit, this crew was more accommodating than the last—they even produced a muzzle for us.
Too bad it was three sizes too big, wouldn’t stay on, and Lucky hated every second. After improvising and posing him for staff photos as “proof” he was muzzled, we finally boarded.
Finally Onboard- The Surrender
And then—smoke. Or at least what looked like smoke.
The cabin filled with a misty haze that began filtering down from the overhead storage as the engines warmed up. Passengers ahead and behind us began pointing up at it, talking to each other and whispering about it. No one wanted to be responsible for causing a full panic on a packed plane.
I looked over at Drake who was clearly panicked, holding onto Lucky and on the verge of bolting off the plane. I did some quick mental calculating and deduced that that it was just the AC and humidity doing their weird science experiment. It took more than one attempt to calm Drake but he eventually did settle down when he realized that no one else was alarmed by the “smoke”.
With that mini-heart attack behind us, we buckled in for the final leg. By now the novelty had worn off—everyone, kids, dog and myself included, were just done.
We were in it hook, line, and sinker. Now all that remained was out of our hands. We just had to wait out our last flight and see what waited for us down below. What waited for us in Ashgabat.
Arrival in Ashgabat
Landing felt like relief, but also?
Chaos, round two.
We deplaned directly onto the tarmac, and somehow Duston, the kids, and Lucky exited through the back while I came out the front. Cue me, trying to reunite with my family while surrounded by buses, drivers shouting “VIP! CIP!” at random passengers, and my own sleep-deprived brain trying to keep up.
For the record: paying extra for CIP/VIP service would’ve been worth every penny. Hindsight’s a pain. The extra services essentially allow someone to meet you at the plane and handle all of the paperwork and translation issues on your behalf.
I found my family and we crammed onto a bus—standing room only—with a driver who apparently enjoyed slamming the brakes every 30 seconds. Pretty sure the only reason we didn’t all faceplant was because we were pressed together like sardines. There was no room to fall; only to become better acquainted with your neighbors.
The bus took an eternity to get us to the terminal. An eternity that we could have avoided just by walking. We finally made it inside and that was a relief all on its own. While we had arrived at 3am it was still about 95 degrees outside. and we had just been jammed into a buss together.
The airport itself was another maze. We simply followed the crowd and hoped for the best. It was huge, gold everywhere, eerily empty, with conveyor belts that didn’t even run. No English signage, just stern security guards silently directing the herd. Eventually, locals peeled off and our smaller group of about 20 weary travelers shuffled toward the only sign we could read: VISAS.
At this point, English was nonexistent—except from us newbies. Strangers became allies, pooling resources and courage. Some were teachers like us—my earlier hunch proving right, others were tourists, all equally clueless.
Fever Dreams
As we walked the long empty hallways of the Ashgabat airport, I looked back at each of us- We were sleepwalking through one of the strangest experiences of the trip so far, surrounded by gold and ever-present security guards. We no longer knew what was real and expected versus what was fever-dreamed from our weary imaginations.
We were herded like cattle towards gates and explained what to do by gestures alone. Suddenly there were nurses in outfits that I have never seen the like of in my life. I couldn’t decide if they resembled nurses from the 1950’s or nurses straight out of Silent Hill. Their personalities and briskness certainly leaned more towards the latter.
Dressed in white, long and buttoned medical coats layered over the top of blue dresses with perfectly round white hats on their heads. The hats reminded me of a cross between 1950s American nurse headwear and your classical chef’s hat. Each nurse wore a facemask so all that you could see of who they were was their eyes, eyes that looked as if we were at least the 100th lost American they’ve had to swab.
After a blur of back-and-forth between the passport window, the visa window, and nurses straight out of a video game, we finally emerged on the other side—tired, frazzled, but cleared.
Bonus: we made a new friend, a fellow teacher who now happens to be my classroom neighbor. I forgive her for all assumptions made off our initial sightings of each other back in Istanbul. They were after all, well earned assumptions.
Reuniting with our luggage
Baggage claim was mercifully kind. All eight pieces, together, waiting.
One thing we accidentally got right was wrapping our luggage in colorful duct tape.
Standing in baggage claim staring at mountains of suitcases, ours practically glowed.
A crew member helped us haul everything, and after only a few curious inspections—including my bamboo flute, which apparently posed a potential national security threat—we stumbled through a final set of doors. And there they were: familiar faces from the school. The school Director and Director of Instruction, standing at 3 a.m. just to welcome us.
By then, we were delirious. We got to the hotel, piled into a room with broken AC, no wifi, terrible water pressure, and all crammed into the one cool bedroom together.
Honestly? It felt oddly familiar.
We collapsed.
We’d made it.
After months of planning, paperwork, second-guessing, and three days of travel, we were finally in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
It is strange looking back now, knowing that what felt overwhelming then eventually became ordinary life.
We couldn’t have imagined then that we’d eventually spend weekends exploring places like Nisa.
The airport chaos was over. The real story was just beginning. Subscribe below to follow our family’s adventures, misadventures, and everyday life around the world.
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