My boat was meters from shore when the waves hit.

Boxing Day, 2004.

When the earthquake struck at 06:30 (01:00 GMT), I was on a ferry heading to Havelock, an island in the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar.

Known for its silver sand and crystal clear waters, Radhanagar Beach had recently been crowned ‘Asia’s Best Beach’ by Time Magazine.

My best friend from university and her family had lived in Port Blair, the capital of the archipelago, for a decade and a half, but this was my first visit to the islands, where I had arrived on Christmas Eve.

We had planned to spend three days in Havelock and in the morning we packed snacks and sandwiches, gathered excited children and headed out to catch the ferry from Phoenix Bay jetty in Port Blair.

Not wanting to miss anything, I was standing on the front deck, looking around, when disaster struck.

Just as we were leaving the port, the ship lurched and suddenly the pier we had boarded next to crumpled and fell into the sea. The watchtower and an electricity pole followed.

It was an extraordinary sight. Dozens of people next to me looked on with their mouths open.

Fortunately, the pier was deserted at the time so there were no casualties. A ship was due to leave there in half an hour, but the travelers had not yet arrived.

A member of the ship’s 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 ever recorded in the world, and remains the largest and most destructive in Asia.

It occurred off the coast of northwest Sumatra, beneath the Indian Ocean, and unleashed a devastating tsunami that killed about 228,000 people in more than a dozen countries and caused massive damage in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives and Thailand.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located about 100 kilometers north of the epicenter, suffered extensive damage when a wall of water, up to 15 meters (49 feet) high in places, made landfall about 15 minutes later.

The official death toll was estimated at 1,310, but with more than 5,600 people missing and presumed dead, more than 7,000 islanders are believed to have died.

However, while we were on the ship, we did not realize the magnitude of the destruction around us. Our cell phones didn’t work in the water and we only received fragments of information from the crew. We heard of damage in Sri Lanka, Thailand and the Maldives, and in the coastal city of Nagapattinam in southern India.

But there was no information on Andaman and Nicobar, a collection of hundreds of islands scattered in the Bay of Bengal, located about 1,500 kilometers (915 miles) east of mainland India.

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 reach the islands was by ferry but, as we later learned, an estimated 94% of the region’s piers were damaged.

That was also the reason why on December 26, 2004 we never reached Havelock. We were told the pier was damaged and under water.

Then the ship turned around and began the return journey. For a while there was speculation that we might not be cleared to dock at Port Blair for security reasons and would have to spend the night at anchor.

This made the passengers, most of them tourists eager for sun and sand, anxious.

After several hours of sailing in rough seas, we returned to Port Blair. Because Phoenix Bay had been closed after the morning’s damage, we were taken to Chatham, another port in Port Blair. The pier where they dropped us off had huge holes in some places.

Signs of devastation were all around us as we headed home: buildings had been turned into rubble, small overturned boats were in the middle of the streets, and roads had large cuts. Thousands of people were left homeless when the tsunami flooded their homes in low-lying areas.

I met a traumatized nine-year-old girl whose house was full of water and she told me she had almost drowned. One woman told me that she had lost all of her life’s possessions in the blink of an eye.

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 so much havoc on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the magnitude of the tragedy was overwhelming.

The salt water contaminated many fresh water sources and destroyed large areas of arable land. Getting vital supplies to the islands was difficult as the piers were unusable.

Authorities mounted a massive relief and rescue effort. The army, navy and air force were deployed, but it was days before they could reach all the islands.

Every day, navy and coast guard ships brought boatloads of people left homeless by the tsunami from other islands to Port Blair, where schools and government buildings became temporary shelters.

They brought stories of devastation in their home countries. Many told me they had escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

A woman from Car Nicobar told me that when the earthquake hit, the ground began to spew foamy water at the same time as the sea waves arrived.

She and hundreds of others from her village had waited for rescuers without food or water for 48 hours. She said it was a “miracle” that she and her 20-day-old baby had survived.

Port Blair was rocked almost daily by aftershocks, some strong enough to spark rumors of new tsunamis, sending frightened people running to reach higher ground.

A few days later, the Indian army took journalists to Car Nicobar, a flat, fertile island known for its charming beaches and also home to a large Indian air force colony.

The devastating tsunami completely devastated the base. Here the water rose 12 meters and, while most people were sleeping, the ground opened under their feet. One hundred people died here. More than half were air force officers and their families.

We visited the island’s Malacca and Kaakan villages, which also bore the brunt of nature’s fury, forcing residents to take shelter in tents along the road. Among them were families destroyed by the tsunami.

A heartbroken young couple told me that they had managed to save their five-month-old baby, but that their other children, aged seven and 12, were swept away by the water.

Surrounded by coconut trees on all sides, all the houses had turned into rubble. Among the personal items scattered were clothing, textbooks, a child’s shoe and a musical keyboard.

The only thing that remained surprisingly intact was a bust of the father of the Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi, in a roundabout.

A senior army officer told us that his team had recovered seven bodies that day and we watched their mass cremation from a distance.

At the air force 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 leaving a trace.

After all these years, I sometimes still think about the day I got on the ferry to Havelock.

I wonder what would have happened if the tremors had come a few minutes earlier.

And what would have happened if the wall of water had hit the shore while I was waiting at the pier to board our ferry?

On Boxing Day 2004, I nearly lost my life. Thousands of people who died were not so lucky.

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