As ski resorts go, Kashmir’s Gulmarg must rank as the most militarised on earth. The mountain road is peppered with security checkpoints and a High Altitude Warfare School lies…

Laurie Bowles, a dreadlocked 24-year-old Englishman, clipped his boots to his snowboard and lunged from the roof of the world into a gaping narrow gully of ice, sugar and powder.…