Late one night in 1978 I was driving up from Sussex, alone, having just been to the theatre. There was deep fog in the Ashdown Forest, and one moment I was driving rather cautiously through the mist, and the next, this character came out of a side turning, just after the Mormon temple in East Grinstead, and smashed into me.

With broken windows, a shattered windscreen and shards of glass everywhere, it was as if I was lying in a splintered crystal palace. I remember getting out of my car and walking across the road — quite unaware that my spine was broken and that I could have been paralysed by being so foolish as to move. I went over to this young man’s car, and in a very English way asked, “Are you all right?” and then fainted.

My memory comes in little slabs after that. A couple of worthy Mormons came out of the temple and comforted me and called an ambulance. I can remember the medics manipulating my feet and legs to see if I was paralysed, and hospital staff asking about my next of kin. I also remember waiting for my x-ray reports before phoning my family. I was in such pain and so sedated that I had no idea which bones were broken.

For weeks I was laying there in pain, with a fractured spine, dislocated shoulder and smashed-up ribs. It was impossible to find a comfortable position, especially at night. I thought I was going to read, but it was too exhausting. I was like a zombie. The days seemed to elide into one another. In my ward, an apparent madman chattered all night, and a man was dying of cancer beside me. I was in and out of amnesia. Many people came to visit me, but I don’t remember them coming. I don’t remember any of the doctors or nurses —all those memories are completely lost.

What I do remember is a sense of constant nurturing and compassion: I was cosseted, completely embalmed in irresponsibility. Everything was being done for me; the world outside hardly existed and simply withered away. Friends and family coped with the aftermath of the accident. The police came and said they were prosecuting the other driver — it turned out he had no insurance and no licence and was underage. But none of this mattered to me; trouble ended at the end of my bed, basically. In one sense it was nice, because before I’d been worried about whatever book I was writing, I was worried about my mortgage and I now didn’t have to bother about anything.

But after three weeks, I got afraid. Life was becoming too easy; it seemed like they wanted to keep me in for ever and I discharged myself early. When my parents drove me out of hospital, it was like re-entering the planet. People were going shopping, walking their dogs, and I remember being absolutely astonished there was a world outside.

For a long time I had this tremendous energy. I was reacting and responding to everything in an extraordinarily heightened way, like some mad person. When I began driving again, I remember stopping people several times and saying, “Can I give you a lift?” and being surprised they would refuse. When people were around I didn’t stop talking, which is not like me at all. But it was a feeble kind of surface energy: I needed others to spark off, and the moment there was nobody to interact with, I collapsed. It was like being manic-depressive.

Very slowly I recovered, and the ribs and shoulder mended themselves, although the back went on troubling me, and still occasionally does.

My life wasn’t very good at that time. I was unhappy emotionally, because I had been very much in love with a woman, but it was a lopsided passion and had ended a few months before. I remember wondering if she’d heard of my accident and might contact me. But she hadn’t. Or didn’t. I was reconciled to never seeing her again. In fact, her own life was changing at the time and we returned to friendship a few months later.

My work was less good than I would have wished too. I’d done perfectly respectable travel books, but looking back, they’d all been about small places — Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus, which is half the size of Wales.

The enforced idleness of lying flat on my back in hospital sent my mind into overdrive; I became more and more of a megalomaniac, and there was now some element of wanting to confront the fear.

I decided there must be something bigger to write about, and I conceived the idea of walking the Great Wall of China and driving round Russia. Those ambitions were what kept me afloat.

The Russian book was my first success, and it might not have happened without the accident. I don’t think the accident changed the trajectory of my emotional life, but it left me with a greater sense of my own vulnerability, and the need to maximise whatever time is left.

Colin Thubron’s latest book is Shadow of the Silk Road (Vintage paperback)

Times recommends

• Live chat: Thrifty ways to update your winter wardrobe
• Is anybody out there really listening?
• Nutrition Q&A: Will eating late make me fat?