A SCOTSMAN WALKS INTO A WAR ZONE...
Two days into his new life in Kashmir, David Robertson had already seen enough.
Perhaps it didn’t help that the journey from Phoenix, his previous home, had taken nearly three days and involved four energy-sapping flights. The former Aberdeen, Rangers and Leeds United defender was exhausted; it was one thing to arrive in Srinagar, the state capital, and be greeted by icy winter blasts, but quite another to find himself almost entirely cut off from the outside world.
He told his new employers that it had all been a mistake. He wanted to leave straight away.
“I called them and said, ‘I need to go home – I can’t do this , Robertson tells FourFourTwo. I was in this hotel and there was no internet – at that time of year the power and electricity go out three or four times a day, so you can’t always watch television and I couldn’t call my family. I just wanted to go home.”
That was in January 2017, but Robertson was persuaded not to throw in the towel. Nearly three years on, he’s preparing for a fourth season with Real Kashmir in India’s I-League. He has a long run-up to the new campaign: at the time of writing, it’s been delayed by several weeks to November 30, meaning pre-season will have lasted four months. They have played 14 friendlies already, but that’s nothing compared to many of the challenges Robertson has faced since deciding to try his luck in one of the most troubled spots on
