From Tragedy To Triumph To The Taj Mahal

(CBS)  When David Mulholland was in the car accident that left him almost unable to function, his family was frightened that the life of the gifted man would be forever limited by his injuries. But they could not have been more wrong.

Today, Mulholland is more than just ambulatory -- he has resumed his life and his graduate school studies, where he's working towards a Ph.D.

He's doing so well, in fact, that he's embarking on the trip of a lifetime: a whirlwind 72-hour trek through India with Dave Price. The pair will travel to Maharashtra, India, the third largest state in India, located in the country's southwestern region. From there, Dave and David will visit Mumbai (Bombay) and the Taj Mahal and also see Delhi. They are staying in Taj hotels and flying on the Taj private jet around India. Which certainly beats the Darjeeling Express.

But Mulholland's cushy trip abroad belies the difficult time he's had the past several years.

"Dave was going to a stop sign and it was his turn to go and when he went a US postal truck ran into him having not seen him," explained his wife, Lee. The force of the crash left David with what doctors termed a traumatic brain injury, or TBI, rendering him permanently disabled.

"He started to have problems doing his work, problems doing daily activities, he couldn't remember what brush to brush his teeth with, he couldn't remember to put his pants on before he put his shoes on," remembers Lee.

"What we take for granted, what is easy for us, he has had to relearn in many ways. But he's not a quitter," observes Brent Betit, a friend and colleague of David's.

And he'd like to encourage others suffering from TBIs. "He would like to help other people who have brain injuries, particularly veterans out of Afghanistan and Iraq," says Lee.

"David is devoting his life to giving back; he suffered an experience in many cases that would have handicapped a person for life and he has taken that experience turned it into power," says Brent.