Walk in the park...

So I'm still planning the Silk Road trip, and Istanbul is very inspirational for that. But I'm wondering if Megan might have a point about it perhaps being unwise, given that I just found myself thinking "Actually, maybe northern Afghanistan *is* the easy way to go...."

Still. It's not for a couple of years. Perhaps Turkmenistan will have opened its borders by then. And we can always backtrack to Azerbaijan and get a ferry across the Caspian. I hear Azerbaijan is fine, except for the Armenian border, where you have to watch for landmines.