Hacking and wheezing I sat down in the snow for the the 10th time in 3 minutes.
As I gasp for air, gulping it down in huge freezing mouthfuls I decide it’s probably best to quit smoking… at least while I’m up here.
When my breathing returns to normal and my heart-rate goes below heart-attack levels I stand up, tell my calves to stop whining and continue down the mountain.

A clear day had finally found Gulmarg, after the clouds dumped 45cm of snow in a single day some days back, me, the Aussies and Robert excitedly waited for the first stage of the gondola to open.
While we were standing there I met the first snowboarders I’d seen in the place, a group of four Russians from Moscow who spoke pretty good English but were more interested in talking amongst themselves.

Once we got up the first stage I hopped from one foot to the other in anticipation as Billah chatted with the lift operators.
Suddenly the massive machinery whirred into life and the first pod slid round the track and open its doors.
Rob, me and the two Aussies all piled in, sticking our skis/boards out the top where they would get trapped in place by the closing door.

The mountain loomed  huge ahead of us as we passed the tree level and finally got a look at the second stage up close.
Blood drained from my face.
“Oh. My. God”
The slope was far far more technical than anything I’d tackled before.
Hardly surprising as I’d only ever been on an artificial slope, at approximately a 45 degree angle, before.
This… this was more like 75 degrees…

I satat the top strapping my board on as the Russians arrived from the  pod behind us.
“Excited?” I asked them.
“I’m a little scared” replied the girl from the group.
“That’s ok, I’m fucking terrified!”
As I hauled myself to my feet, breathing heavily from that small effort, I looked down the slope and couldn’t help thinking that should I unbalance and pitch forward down the mountain I would tumble head over heels for hundreds and hundreds of metres until I arrived at the bottom of the second stage.
“Well, ya gotta die sometime!” I thought to myself and pushed myself over the lip.

The snow was amazing, the most beautiful powder you could imagine, my first time making fresh tracks I slalomed back and forth getting a feel for carving in a space wide enough to make it possible!
I only managed two runs that day, by the end my lungs were screaming blue murder asking me why I’d taken them into space and expected them to function.

The next day I arrived at the top, not having smoked since the day before.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Aaaaah, I can breathe now!”

All in all I managed around 4 days of boarding due to weather conditions, and by god was it amazing.

By the time boxing day had rolled around me and Rob were ready to leave.
“How about a lift down to Delhi?” Rob had enquired over lunch one day.
“You pay for half the petrol?”
“Sure, why not?”
And that was  how come the 27th of December 2008 we strapped Rob’s backpack on to the back of my bike and set off in the direction of Jammu.

After a full 10 hours riding we stayed the night in a bargain basement guesthouse outside Jammu and set off the next morning.

About mid-day we saw the first sign for Delhi itself, followed it, but kept going south instead of SE.
“Is this the right way?” I thought to myself
We stopped in a town to ask directions
“Delhi?” I asked a local in the monty-python style of foreign languages.
He pointed the way we’d come
“Fucks sake… Oh well, we’ll go down to Amritsar and take the GT to Delhi”
We set off again down the road to Amritsar.

Then I woke up  on a hospital bed with Rob on my right lying on his back in another.
“I’m so sorry…” I told Rob, and was hit with a wave of pain, my jaw was broken, I tried to put my hand to my face but couldn’t. I looked down and saw my arm was broken.
Using my left hand to hold my jaw in one piece I asked
“What happened?”
Rob sighed and in a tone that suggested it was not the first time he’d told me he explained that we’d overtaken a truck, which then turned right, right into us.

I blacked out again and came to in an x-ray room, which Rob explained was in another hospital.
He was next in the queue and sat on the table ready for the scan.
Worried I asked “Are you ok mate? Anything broken?”
“My back is very painful, but we’ll see”
A few minutes later I was up on the table being pulled into excruciating positions so that the ancient x-ray machine could get a proper look at my injuries.

The doctor slammed the x-rays on the whiteboard and peered at them intensely.
He turned to Rob.
“Nothing is broken, but you may have muscular pain for a while”
Turning to me he added
“Your jaw is broken in two places and your right arm is broken near the top”

“We can deal with these injuries here, but it might take some time. Would you like to go to a private hospital?”
“Yes please!”
I spent the next week at Dr Grewal’s hospital where they plated my arm, jaw and wired my jaws shut, though very well as I was still able to speak surprisingly clearly.

Rob stayed with me for a few days having helped me to Grewal’s hospital (which was a rather agonising experience in a tuk-tuk).
We waved goodbye a few days later as he had a prebooked plane to catch, but I was very grateful for his help and company (and very glad that he wasn’t in the same condition as me).

I was in a bite of a state, although I could get around quite happily, my thought processes were very slow and easily lost or distracted.
My bike was some 50 miles away in a police station and it was to be at least 3 months before I could ride again.
I spent my days lying in bed contemplating what do to next, whether I should recover in India and go on to Sri-Lanka and Australia as planned, whether I should just head back home and ship the bike, and whether a blended cheeseburger would fit through my teeth.
After a week in the hospital I had my decision.
Eating soup and being unable to do just about anything for a week had been depressing enough, spending 3 months essentially confined to a hotel would send me completely mad.

As I could barely get my head round the logistics of moving from the hospital to the hotel, and going to the cash machine seemed such a challenge it made my heart sink, I was very very grateful when my father got an emergency Indian visa and leapt on the next plane out.

We spent the next few days going from pillar to post, collecting the bike from the police, getting it shipped and for some reason going back to Wagha border to try and get the carnet stamped (I knew it wouldn’t work but the freight guys insisted!).

Finally, less than a week after my dad arrived, we stepped off the long-haul flight and into London Heathrow.

I stood outside the airport, the cool January air causing me to shiver.
“Is something wrong?” my dad asked.
“No James, it’s good to be home.”