2025-2026 Central Asia Adventure – Kars Turkey
Today’s Huntington’s Disease report is about CRISPR-Cas9. That’s a mouthful, but “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats” is the name for a breakthrough in genetic editing that enables precise modifications to DNA by targeting specific sequences, acting like molecular scissors to cut, edit, or replace DNA sequences in living organisms. Since HD is caused by a too-long section of DNA in Chromosome 4, CRISPR is tailor-made for treating Huntington’s disease. By using CRISPR-Cas9, scientists can potentially correct or silence the mutant HTT gene, either by editing out the excessive CAG repeats responsible for the toxic protein or by introducing protective genetic modifications. CRISPR is so amazingly great that the co-inventors American biochemist Jennifer A. Doudna and French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier won the Nobel Prize for Extreme Cleverness in 2020.
Hello from Kars, the seventh stop on the trip. Kars is a small city in eastern Turkey, on a high plateau at about 5,740 feet above sea level bordering Armenia to the east and Georgia to the north. Due to its location, it has been shaped over millennia by Armenian, Russian, Ottoman, and Turkish influences. It has a harsh climate with winters dropping below -30°C, but in late September now it’s sunny and pleasantly warm.
Back in Kayseri, I rolled to the train station in the dark at 12:30am for the 1:06am train to Kars. It’s scheduled for, get this, 19 hours! It’s all just part of the adventure of slow travel. A least I don’t have to cross any borders! Many people were sitting in the station waiting room, very hot and stuffy. A big red pixel display on the wall was not showing anything helpful. I then spotted a small computer screen on a desk, and it was showing each train and its expected arrival time. It was refreshing itself in a throwback to the train stations of old – flipping over each letter until the word is shown. Cool for 1800s mechanical technology, annoying overkill for 2025. It spent so much time flipping letters it only showed the actual train information for 2 seconds, then through the elaborate refresh again. My 1:06am train was shown as 1:00am, then 1:09 then 1:15. I went and sat outside in the chilly wind, felt good. The train going the opposite way, back to Ankara came and a hundred people got on board. At 1:20am my train arrived, not bad for Turkey. Found my car and my cabin. As expected, it’s a 4 bunk sleeper. The two on the left are already in use, a new guy and I pulled down the two bunks on the right. I climbed up into my bunk, put my backpack into a handy top-level rack, spread out my blanket and instantly went to sleep.
I woke up several times through the night in pain from the thin and hard mattress, went back to sleep, very warm even with the window open. Finally awake for good at 9am. Propped myself up on my pillows, got out my charger and plugged everything in to the handy nearby power socket, linked my earbuds to the laptop and started watching videos. Finished Alien Earth and Dexter Resurrection. Had lunch in the restaurant car – some kind of chicken stew. Pantomimed no onions and I think he understood.
As we pulled into Erzincan at 1pm, the guy from the bottom bunk tried to get me to come down from my bed and sit in the chair where his bed was. I pantomimed no, I stay here. He kept saying it. I used Google Translate to tell him I’m staying in my bed. I can’t tell if he’s trying to be helpful or to enforce some policy. He’s not railroad staff so I’m going to stay in my bed until forced out – 7 more hours to go, I’m not sitting in a chair! We sat at this station for AN HOUR, then pulled out, 6 hours to go. The one man left in the cabin gave me an apple from his farm, crunchy and sweet – thank you! Finished Murderbot, picking up on season 4 of The West Wing. We finally pulled into the station in Kars at 11:15 pm. That’s 22 hours, folks! Wow. Actually I liked it, watching the scenery go by, eating, sleeping and watching a bajillion TV shows – good thing I know how to entertain myself.
From the station I started up Google Maps to the hotel address and rolled 20 minutes through a cold deserted dark town and the hotel isn’t there! Searched on the hotel name and now it says it’s 20 minutes back the way I came, and several blocks north of the station. Passed two packs of large street dogs, clearly used to be pets. Barking at me, one yellow lab followed me for several blocks. I finally found the hotel, with a nice old man at the desk at midnight. He was wildly gesticulating and I finally figured out he was asking me if I was going to a famous local mountain tomorrow. I figured out later he was talking about the “Ani Ruins”, the UNESCO-listed Ani archaeological site, a medieval Armenian city 45 km from Kars, a top attraction but takes 2â3 hours to visit and closes around 6 PM. I decided to decline. The room is small but the bed is comfy with a thick duvet. The shower stall is a good size but the shower head can only point high and 45 degrees to the right which makes things awkward.
In the morning I rushed to get ready and make it down for breakfast. All bread gone, just some cheese & tomatoes left, plus three plates of a weird stringy cheese in long strips, hard and chewy but OK.
I wandered around the block and found a big change from feeling deserted last night – all storefronts are open including an open air market. Everything from fruit & veg to barber shops to hardware and the first cow/goat/sheep milking machines I’ve ever seen for retail sale on a sidewalk. There is a LOT of the weird stringy cheese for sale in the shops, and it’s apparently a Kars specialty. I saw hundreds of wheels of cheese molded into shape with the word KARS embossed on them. Looking for snacks I went into a shop with a large selection of nuts and dried fruit and some things that looked like rolled baklava so I pointed and indicated that I’ll take three baklava. He waved his hands like he didn’t want to sell to me. On his phone he translated to “Display product only”. Well, OK then.
Went to the Coffee 1919 shop at the base of the castle. They have a giant ordering screen at the front door. I chose a mozzarella salad and chocolate milkshake. I tried to pay but the payment terminal wouldn’t respond. I asked the counter girls for help, one of them came out and powered it up, but it still wouldn’t recognize a card. Giving up, I showed her what I ordered on the big screen so she could enter my order into her counter terminal, but she said they don’t have the salad. I then showed her my second choice of a mozzarella toast – don’t have. Then a weird hot dog – don’t have! She finally pointed to the glass case with sandwiches and said I can have one of these. Weird. Why have a giant ordering screen with dozens of things you don’t actually sell? I took a 3 cheese bagel and a small brick of chocolate with peanuts. Paid and sat down. Counter kid walked all the way over to my table, points to the counter and says my order is ready. That’s the second time this has happened – notified that my order is waiting on the counter rather than just brining it to me. I walked over and brought it back to my table. I’m beginning to think things are just deeply weird here, or it’s just me and my prejudices of good customer service. What do you think?
Back at the hotel I worked on my plan to get from here across the border to Tbilisi Georgia. I don’t want to give anything away until the next post but although it’s not far away distance-wise, things get very weird geopolitically and that’s reflected in the possible methods of me getting to my next goal location. The trip is going to have a post all to itself, it’s that epic. Since I’m writing this, I’m clearly still alive so I’ve got that going for me. I confirmed my plan with an extremely unhelpful kid at the station but he wouldn’t sell me a ticket until tomorrow. Oh well.
Next stop: The adventure to Georgia.
