2025-2026 Central Asia Adventure – Dilijan Armenia
Today’s Huntington’s Disease report is about “genetic anticipation”. Genetic anticipation is the phenomenon where the number of CAG repeats in the mutant huntingtin gene expands further across generations, particularly through the father, increasing disease severity and lowering the age of onset. It can add 5-10 extra CAG repeats per generation via paternal transmission, potentially reducing the age of onset by 5-10 years, and with Juvenile HD under the age of 20 emerging in some families.
Welcome to Armenia. This is another new country to me, #70 on my life list.
Below is the standard summary:
– Cool Ranch Doritos: No, but other crap flavours
– Spain & Wise Debit Cards Work: Yes
– Airalo Worldwide Telephone/Data/SMS eSIM Works: Yes
– VPN Works: Yes
– Cost of Living: $
– Currency: USD $1 ~ 385 Dram, Euro â¬1 ~ 449 Dram
– Language Issues: Difficulties in most places, Google Translate is effective
Your Short History Lesson:
Armenia boasts one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations, with a history dating back over 3,000 years. Like everyone else in the region, it’s location along major trade routes made it prime pickins for conquest by outsiders. Small kingdoms ruled until 612 BC when the Orontid dynasty established an Armenian identity. It became the first country to officially recognize Christianity as its state religion in 301 AD. The Mongols rolled through in the 13th century, dominating the region for centuries. The Ottomans committed the Armenian Genocide in 1915, killing up to 1.5 million people. The Soviets took over in 1922, until independence in 1991. Wars over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region with Azerbaijan in 1988-1994 and again in 2020 have resulted in continuing strong tensions across the region. Azerbaijan also wants to re-establish and update a Soviet-era road and rail link through southern Armenia, making a direct trade route with Turkey. Since Turkey is a strong ally of Azerbaijan, this explains why the border is closed between Turkey and Armenia, leading to my previously-documented loop de loop minibus ride from eastern Turkey into Georgia. So yeah, things geo-politically are not great here.
Sadly this tension has a significant impact on my travels – multiple sources say if I have an Armenian stamp in my passport I will be rejected from entering Azerbaijan! Since I want to visit both countries, this presents a logistical challenge. After extensive research there are 3 possibilities to get around the problem:
1) Ask Armenia immigration to stamp me in and out on a separate piece of paper that I keep tucked into my passport. After I leave, I dispose of the paper and Azerbaijan is none the wiser. Strange, but apparently this is documented as a common workaround and I’ve heard it is also used on the land border crossing between Jordan and Israel.
2) Stamp in and out of Armenia on my Canadian passport and use my “clean” US passport to enter Azerbaijan. This gets weird because the Canadian one doesn’t have recent country stamps and Armenia may question how I got here. Or I could try vice versa on the passports.
3) I get Armenian stamps and try my luck with Azerbaijan immigration.
I will try #1 first, use #2 as a backup and #3 as a Hail Mary. I will be fully honest and explain my goal as a traveler to go to both countries and can we find a way to make it work? Armenia knows about this ongoing problem so I’m hoping they have a solution they use for people like me.
Hello from Dilijan, the tenth stop on the trip. Getting here was a doozy my friends. Mikey fights centuries of geo-political unrest and comes away vanquished.
Leaving my hotel in Tbilisi, I took the metro to the minibus station. I was directed to a ticket office where they crossed my name off the online ticket purchase list and walked me to a minibus. I still had 45 minutes so I walked to a nearby Spar and got a banana, KitKat and Oreos – prime minibus snacking material. We stopped once for a break, on this relatively short 5 hour run.
We arrived at the border and got stamped out of Georgia in my US passport.
Everyone got back in the van and across the border bridge to the Armenia side we went. At the immigration desk with butthole firmly clenched I played the piece-of-paper game but the immigration agent is resisting. I explained that I want to travel to the other countries in the area and an Armenia stamp can make it “difficult”. I show him my Canada passport, he says Canadians need a pre-applied visa, but US needs no visa. This is not what my research said, damn! He took my US passport, flicked through, then picked up his stamp – I tried to stop him and ask for the stamp in the paper again. He laughed and said he can’t do it. Then with a grin he put a big fucking bright green Armenia stamp right there under my outgoing Georgia stamp. FUCK. He said “No problem Azerbaijan”, I said “Yes big problem” and gave him the stinkeye as I walked away. He’s not the one with the problem now. I’ll have to research it again but both the piece-of-paper trick and the two-passport trick both failed. I may end up having to skip any country that has a beef with Armenia – Azerbaijan soon and Turkey if I ever want to go back there. I’m sitting in the van seething that he’s fucked up my plans.
Did I ever tell you my hypothesis called “The Final Insult?” It’s at the end of a string of bad events, there’s always one more that really just kicks you in the nuts for fun. Well this is a prime example coming up! We pulled out of immigration and get about 100 meters down the road when the engine starts making a howling noise. The driver pulled over, popped the hood and smoke started pouring out. He starts making phone calls. I peek in and it looks like the turbo bearing/oil seal let go and sprayed oil all over the nice Mercedes engine. Scheisse. The passengers pile out and stand around on the side of the road, then go back in the van and sit for a bit. Repeat ad nauseum. An English-speaking passenger is translating saying cars are coming to help us. One arrives and takes a couple of passengers away. An hour and a half later a black car pulls up with 3 guys all dressed in black. The driver points and me and confirms I’m going to Dilijan, I get in and we peel away. I haven’t seen this level of contempt for rules of the road since my last taxi ride in Rome. I was moderately worried about keeping all of my organs, not for the first time on my travels. We eventually get to Dilijan about 20 miles down the road and they dropped me off in the center of town. The town is very picturesque, nestled in a river valley between two big mountains. The hillsides are covered in dense forests. It’s early October and the leaves are beginning to turn and it looks lovely. The hotel clerk in Tbilisi said Dilijan is his favourite town in all of Armenia.
I walked about 30 minutes up the hill to my hotel. Mass confusion ensues because the address in the booking is listed as Kalinini 120 but there is no sign for a hotel anywhere near. I went inside a pharmacy to ask where the hotel is and it turns out the pharmacist also runs the hotel – it’s upstairs! She took me up to the room – it’s new construction, pretty nice and bright with a balcony overlooking the noisy main road down into town. It’s cold to the bone – the radiator doesn’t work but she pointed to an electric heater in the cupboard in the shared kitchen. I plugged it in and cranked it up.
My Barcelona investment group’s Grand Poohbah Astghik had invited me to visit her family in Dilijan, since it’s her hometown. Luckily for me it’s right on my travel path. I messaged Astghik and her father that I’m here. She’s likely on a plane as she just left Dilijan today to go back to Barcelona – bad timing!
I like to book transport and hotel in the next-next place right as I arrive in the next place. It doesn’t make sense to book too many locations ahead because literally anything can happen that could impact dates and places and modes of transport. Looking at how I can get to my next target country Azerbaijan, I confirmed there is no land border crossing from either Armenia (duh) or Georgia (what?) into Azerbaijan! The only way to get to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is to fly in. So I booked a flight, round trip from Tbilisi to Baku. I am making an exception to my booking strategy as I will visit here in Dilijan, then south to Yerevan, then back up to Tbilisi so I can fly into Baku. The return flight is 4 hours after the first one lands, so if they reject me at immigration for my Armenia stamp I already have a way to get back out to Tbilisi, and will then figure out a way to skip right over Azerbaijan and continue the trip east. If I do get in, I’m out 40 Euros but I’ll forget that as I happily skip my way out of the airport into Baku. Can you guys just get your shit together? I’m sorry about your centuries of conflict, but you’re really putting a crimp in my travel plans! :^{ I used the Azerbaijan web site to apply for the required e-visa, it will be issued and emailed back to me within 3 business days, which is plenty of time. Foreshadowing.
The next morning Astghik’s father Samvel picked me up at my hotel. We went to a monastery at the top of a long winding road up the side of the mountain. The buildings are very old with very impressive architecture and construction styles. He’s clearly been here many times, as an architect he was quoting the building sizes from memory. We drove back down to the river road, then back up the mountain on the other side, even twistier, to a national park. It is past summer season now so not many people are here, but it’s designed as an outdoor activity center for families with hiking, swimming, paddle boats, ziplines, games and restaurants. We then went to a locally famous restaurant that has small outbuildings with one table inside each, and they either overlook a fast-running creek or are literally built cantilevered out over the creek. Clever dogs sit patiently at the door and watch you eat with sad eyes until you toss them some food. As a thank you for the wonderful tour I gave him the bottle of wine that I got from the Tbilisi winery.
The next day I took a slow walk through the town center, noting Soviet and more modern building styles. At a little shop I bought a Dilijan fridge magnet to commemorate my visit to Astghik’s hometown.
Next stop: Yerevan Armenia
