I boarded my flight to London which took a whopping twelve hours, arriving at 7am and heading straight to Acton to hand over my passport. I delivered my passport to the Tucan office and did some printing. I meant to print out a lot more stuff than I actually managed, but as I was already half dead I forgot most of it.

After I had finished at the office, I went to have a look around London. I went to Oxford Street for lunch, I remember thinking, I was shopping here six weeks ago, then I was shopping at Plumpton Market place and now here I am back shopping on Oxford street again….head spinning a bit I think.

I sat in the shadow of the Marble Arch and just looked at it for the longest time, not really knowing what to do with my day in London. After about three hours of wandering around and loitering in random parks I decided to go back to the airport.

I sat in the waiting area of terminal five for about five hours watching TV on my lap top before my flight was ready to board.

I went and collected my luggage from the storage place down stairs and checked in for my flight. You know you've been traveling for a while, when the guy at both the check in desk and the boarding gate has never seen the kind of visa for Russia you now have in your passport.

I boarded my flight and spent most of it trying to sleep, I think it was the most empty plane I had ever been on. I think there were about thirty passengers scattered around the British Airways Airbus A320.

I arrived in Moscow at 4am local time and then had to wait until 7am to get my connecting S7 airways flight to St Petersburg. I went through passport control and rechecked in which took all of twenty minutes and then spent the rest of the time drinking a large iced mocha in a very expensive café in Domodedovo airport.

It was finally time to board the last of the four flights taking me to St Petersburg and I actually managed to watch some TV on this one. We landed in St Petersburg at 9am, a bit early and therefore my transfer wasn't there. I realised after a momentary panic attack that the transfer hadn't arrive because I was early.

I eventually found my transfer and was driven to the Azimut hotel, a drive which should have taken about fifteen minutes but in the crazy Russian rush hour traffic took over an hour. Thankfully, when I arrived I was allowed to check straight in. I think it would have been a major toys out pram moment if I had to wait until 2pm.

I went up to my room and immediately began organising the tour. I even managed to get a welcome note up in reception. I don't know whats happened to this hotel, it used to be like trying to work with Lemmings, and not very smart Lemmings. Imagine my surprise when I gingerly asked if I could put the welcome note up and the Russian lady at the concierge desk gave me a big smile and said "Absolutely, of course you can". Maybe it's one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.

I was now extraordinarily tired, I could feel my body starting to give up and things starting to switch off. However, thinking I was not coming back this year I had thrown out all my orientation notes and now felt I needed to do a quick circuit of the St Petersburg orientation and go to the internet café in the middle of a massive blizzard.

When I returned from that two hours later my roommate, Susan had arrived and I went down to give the pre departure meeting. I had seven people as three had not checked in as yet. I gave a rather scattered pre departure meeting, at the end the three missing passengers turned up. Their transfer had not collected them from the airport and they had spent three hours waiting around. I now had to give my pre departure talk again for their benefit.

I read somewhere, that the human body can go a maximum of ten days without sleep. I hadn't really had much sleep all week if I'm honest and now I had been awake for nearly sixty hours, I think I could actually feel certain parts of my body shutting down. After all the passengers dispersed, I went and had dinner with Sue before going up to bed, before I like certain computers I've had in the past went blue screen of death.