BBC
Just as we were leaving the port, our boat lurched and suddenly the pier we had boarded next to collapsed into the sea.
Boxing Day, 2004.
When the earthquake struck at 6:30 a.m. (0100 GMT), I was on a ferry heading to Havelock, an island in India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago.
Known for its silver sand and clear blue waters, Radhanagar Beach was recently crowned “Asia’s Best Beach” by Time magazine.
My best friend from college and her family had lived in Port Blair, the archipelago capital, for a decade and a half, but this was my first visit to the islands, arriving on Christmas Eve.
We planned to spend three days in Havelock and in the morning we prepared snacks and sandwiches, gathered some excited kids and set off to catch the ferry from Phoenix Bay jetty to Port Blair.
Not wanting to miss anything, I was standing on the foredeck, looking around, when disaster struck.
Just as we were leaving the port, the boat lurched and suddenly the pier we had boarded next to collapsed and fell into the sea. It was followed by the watchtower and a power pole.
It was an extraordinary spectacle. Dozens of people beside me stared open-mouthed.
Fortunately, the pier was deserted at the time so there were no casualties. A boat was due to leave from there in half an hour but the travelers had not yet arrived.
Getty Images
An estimated 94% of the region's piers were damaged
A member of the boat crew told me it was an earthquake. I didn't know it at the time, but the 9.1 magnitude earthquake was the third most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the world – and remains the largest and most destructive in Asia.
Occurring off the coast of northwest Sumatra in the Indian Ocean, it triggered a devastating tsunami that killed an estimated 228,000 people in more than a dozen countries and caused widespread damage in Indonesia, Sri Lanka , in India, the Maldives and Thailand.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located about 100 km north of the epicenter, suffered extensive damage when a wall of water, reaching 15 meters high in places, hit land about 15 minutes later.
The official death toll stands at 1,310 – but with more than 5,600 people missing and presumed dead, more than 7,000 islanders are estimated to have perished.
However, when we were on the boat, we were unaware of the extent of the destruction around us. Our cell phones didn't work on the water and we only got snippets of information from the crew. We've heard of damage in Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand and the Maldives – as well as the coastal town of Nagapattinam in southern India.
Getty Images
The tsunami flooded a large number of houses in low-lying areas
But there was no information about Andaman and Nicobar, a collection of hundreds of islands scattered in the Bay of Bengal, located about 1,500 km (915 miles) east of the Indian mainland.
Only 38 of them were inhabited. They were home to 400,000 people, including six groups of hunter-gatherers who had lived isolated from the outside world for thousands of years.
The only way to access the islands was by ferry, but, as we later learned, an estimated 94% of the area's piers were damaged.
This is also the reason why, on December 26, 2004, we never reached Havelock. The pier was damaged and submerged, we were told.
So the boat turned around and began its journey home. For a while there was speculation that we might not get permission to dock at Port Blair due to security concerns and might have to spend the night at anchor.
This made the passengers – mostly tourists eager to enjoy the sun and sand – anxious.
Getty Images
In Port Blair, buildings were turned into rubble, small overturned boats littered the middle of the streets and the roads had huge gashes.
After several hours of sailing in rough seas, we returned to Port Blair. Phoenix Bay having been closed following the morning's damage, we were taken to Chatham, another port of Port Blair. The pier where we were dropped off had huge gaping holes in places.
Signs of devastation were all around us as we returned home: buildings had turned to rubble, small overturned boats littered the middle of the streets, and the roads had large gashes. Thousands of people were left homeless when the tidal wave flooded their homes in low-lying areas.
I met a traumatized nine-year-old girl whose house was filled with water and she told me she almost drowned. One woman told me she lost everything in her life in the blink of an eye.
Getty Images
Thousands of people were left homeless
Over the next three weeks, I reported extensively on the disaster and its effects on the population.
It was the first time a tsunami had wreaked such devastation in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the scale of the tragedy was overwhelming.
Salt water has contaminated many fresh water sources and destroyed large areas of arable land. It was difficult to get vital supplies to the islands, with the jetties unusable.
Authorities have deployed enormous relief and rescue efforts. The army, navy and air force were deployed, but it took days before they could reach all the islands.
Every day, navy and coast guard ships carried boats full of people made homeless by the tsunami from other islands to Port Blair, where schools and government buildings were turned into temporary shelters.
They brought back stories of devastation in their homelands. Many told me they escaped with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.
A woman from Car Nicobar told me that when the earthquake hit, the ground started spewing foamy water at the same time as the waves came in from the sea.
She and hundreds of other people in her village had been waiting for rescuers without food or water for 48 hours. She said it was a “miracle” that she and her 20-day-old baby survived.
Port Blair was rocked almost daily by aftershocks, some strong enough to trigger rumors of new tsunamis, prompting frightened people to flee to higher ground.
Getty Images
The Indian air base of Car Nicobar was razed by the tidal wave
Days later, the Indian Army flew journalists to Car Nicobar, a flat, fertile island known for its enchanting beaches and also home to a major Indian Air Force colony.
The deadly tsunami had completely razed the base. The water rose 12 meters here and while most people slept, the ground was ripped out from under their feet. About a hundred people died here. More than half were Air Force officers and their families.
We visited the villages of Malacca and Kaakan on the island which also bore the brunt of nature's fury, forcing residents to shelter in tents along the road. Among them were families torn apart by the tidal wave.
A grieving young couple told me they had managed to save their five-month-old baby, but their other children, aged seven and 12, had been swept away by the floodwaters.
Surrounded by coconut trees on all sides, all the houses were transformed into rubble. Among the scattered personal effects were clothes, school books, a child's shoe and a musical keyboard.
The only thing left – surprisingly intact – was a bust of the father of the Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi, at a traffic circle.
Getty Images
Thousands of people missing in tsunami have never been found
A senior army officer told us that his team had recovered seven bodies that day and that we had watched their mass cremation remotely.
At the air base, we watched as rescuers pulled a woman's body out of the rubble.
An official said that for every body found in Car Nicobar, several had been swept away by the waves without a trace.
After all these years, I still sometimes think about the day I took the ferry to Havelock.
I wonder what would have happened if the shaking had happened a few minutes earlier.
And what would have happened if the wall of water had hit the shore while I was waiting on the pier to board our ferry?
The day after Christmas 2004, I had a hard blow. Thousands of people who died were not so lucky.
Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
