My heart is all a flutter

Heart all a flutter! No, not A Level results. My Russian visa arrived this morning. It is quite different to the last one I had many years ago. It takes up a full page in my passport and includes a big holographic stamp.

That means I am definitely fully committed now. I still have a few things to do before I am ready to depart. One of the vital ones is to arrange transport for the first leg of the trip, from Cork to London. I think I will travel Eurolines, it's cheap, I have the time and somehow it seems appropriate. I will break my journey for about a week in London. It will be an opportunity to adjust my body clock and see friends.

I shall be in Siberia from 2nd week in September for 4 weeks. I shall start travelling at the beginning of September, because of the visiting in London. Novosibirsk (which is where I'm going) is about as far from the sea as it is humanly possible to get. I've see pictures of road signs showing distances of nearly 3000km! Find India on a map of the world, head north. when you reach the middle of Russia, stop! That's where Novosibirsk is, give or take a 1000 miles.

I've exchanged "progress all right so far" notes with the people in Russia, and spent part of the day buying pills and potions for the trip. I'll settle down and do things in a more organised way tomorrow.