A member of the boat’s crew advised me it was an earthquake. On the time I did not know, however the 9.1 magnitude quake was the third most powerful, external ever recorded on the earth – and stays the largest and most harmful in Asia.

Occurring off the coast of northwest Sumatra below the Indian Ocean, it unleashed a devastating tsunami that killed an estimated 228,000 individuals throughout greater than a dozen nations and prompted huge injury in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and Thailand.

The Andaman and Nicobar islands, situated nearly 100km north of the epicentre, suffered intensive injury when a wall of water, as excessive as 15 metres (49 ft) in locations, hit land nearly quarter-hour later.

The official dying toll was put at 1,310 – however with greater than 5,600 individuals lacking and presumed useless, it is believed that greater than 7,000 islanders perished.

Whereas on the boat, nonetheless, we have been oblivious to the size of destruction round us. Our cellphones did not work on the water and we solely received snippets of data from the crew. We heard about injury in Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand and Maldives – and the southern Indian coastal city of Nagapattinam.