Stories From My Travels: Escaping The Tsunami-Terror

The Tsunami Part II: Heading far from destruction to the peace of the hills.

The continuation of Part I:

I was just starting to slip into dreamland when I was jolted awake by the sounds from outside the window turning into the screams and shouts of panicked humans!

I jumped up from my bed and ran to the window. Outside I could see a woman standing knee-deep in water and crying out to someone. I saw water gushing fiercely around either side of the building, and a local fishing boat floating by.

“The sea is rising!” I thought. “We need to get out of here!”

For the second time that day, I stood poised to leave this fifteen-story building, while the sea pounded at its base. If the sea really was rising, how long would it take for the sand, in which the foundations stood, to be washed away?

Again, with my daughter in the sling, and my partner, Tristan, now dressed after his shower, I left the room and entered the corridor beyond. It was now full of people, many looking out over the balcony at the end, others simply looking shell-shocked and battling with the struggle to know which emotions they should be feeling.

We made our way down a few floors and began to see the faces of people we knew, yet who were staying in other buildings. It turned out that everyone had been bundled into this building and told to stay until further instructions came. As I turned my nose up at the idea of obeying any instructions to stay put, others urged me not to head out into the madness.

“Amma knows what she is talking about. Just trust her.”

The most frustrating part was not even knowing what had happened or what was currently happening. But little fragments of information were starting to be pieced together.

I heard that a large earthquake had been recorded in the morning (finally, official confirmation) and that Chennai, on the east coast of South India (we were on the west coast), had been hit by a ‘tidal wave’ at 9 o’clock that morning. The coast there had suffered enormous destruction, with many dead or missing. That same wave had then hit the Keralan coast several hours later.

We were then told that there had actually been two waves, not just one, that had hit our coast, and that there might be a third one. Amma wanted to get everyone across the water onto the mainland before the third wave hit, and she was organizing people to get those of the highest priority off of the peninsula first.

After an hour or so of waiting, we were told that it was time for the Western guests at the ashram to make their way out of the building and onto the boats. We descended to the ground floor and exited the building to find an enormous crowd surrounding those heading out. Amma was there, hugging people as they passed and asking them if they had all of their family with them.

The water had now receded, but the ground was sodden and the backwaters were high with fierce currents. We walked down to the boats, a great sense of urgency among the many Indian visitors that joined the throngs of people. We passed our friend, Carmina, with her young son, Noah. Carmina was from Spain and we had become good friends in the short time that we were there, connecting over the fact that we both had high-energy children of similar ages.

She was standing, holding Noah, and seemingly searching for someone. It turned out that she was waiting for her friend, but this friend was making no move to cross the water and was, instead, sticking close to Amma for as long as she could stick it out, seemingly oblivious to Carmina’s frightened self.

Noah was becoming restless and Tristan took him from Carmina’s arms.

“Come with us. We will stick together.” He said.

Carmina let him take Noah and she followed after.

At the water’s edge, there was mayhem. The boatmen were shouting, helping people onto the boats while trying their hardest to control them in the torrents that were whispering a song of death down the backwaters.

I looked at the different boats lined up. Our favorite boats were normally the dugout tree trunks, which surprisingly strong, yet gangly men punted across the water with long poles. However, these looked like a death wish in these risen waters, and we opted for the larger motorboat.

Even that struggled to make headway in the currents that threatened to take us with them, and the motors were revved to the max while the men shouted urgent orders. But, once we were going, we crossed the river painlessly.

Onward and upward

Disembarking on the mainland was much less dramatic. The question that now hung over us was: where should we go?

Ashram residents were waiting to guide all ashram guests towards the partially-constructed Engineering College, belonging to the ashram. However, in my mind, staying so close to the coast was not a desirable choice, and we three adults decided to move straight on and find a way to higher ground.

What happened over the next twenty minutes was a blur. We found ourselves caught in throngs of people, making their way hurriedly and urgently in one direction, down the main street of the town of Vallikavu. People were shouting at one another in Malayalam, the main language of Kerala, but we couldn’t understand a word.

At one point, the shouting became panicked and people started running. There were so many people that it could easily have turned into a stampede. I tried running, but doing so while carrying a heavy two-year-old was pretty impossible, and only made me more anxious and vulnerable to a possible stampede, so I stopped trying and kept my focus on the road ahead.

We came to a place where jeeps were waiting to take people to Kollam, the nearest city. We managed to leap into the back of a moving one, thankfully getting all five of us in. And away we went.

I breathed the biggest sigh of relief in history!

Hurrying to the hills

Despite being on the road and heading away from the danger, we still felt a sense of urgency to get as far and as high as possible.

We asked the driver of the jeep to let us off somewhere where there would be taxis to hire. After what felt like an age, but was probably only around 20–30 minutes of driving, we got out in a town with a few shops and a line of taxis.

We found a driver willing to take us to the hills above Trivandrum, the capital city of Kerala, where we knew there was a well-known yoga ashram — one a group of Sivananda Ashrams. I had suggested that we went there because I assumed they would be sympathetic to our situation and offer us some accommodation, food, and, hopefully, a change of clothes since none of us had that.

Three out of the five of us were also barefoot, having lost our sandals to the sea, and only two of us — myself and my daughter — had passports, since the others had put theirs in the safe at the ashram, now far behind us on our journey. As for money, neither Carmina nor I had more than a small amount of cash, although I also, thankfully, had some traveler's cheques. Though what use they would be in the Sivananda Ashram, I wasn’t sure. Gratefully, Tristan had a wad of cash, so we knew we would be okay for a few days.

Before setting off in the taxi, we bought snacks from a bakery and found a pharmacy where we could buy disposable nappies since potty training now had to be side-lined under unusual circumstances. And then, we were off.

It was a three-hour journey to get all the way to Neyyar Dam, the place where the Sivananda Ashram was situated. As the name implies, it is a large dam, with a wide, expansive reservoir, catching water as it comes off the hills above. The town and the dam attracted many Indian tourists, and beyond the town, surrounding the largest proportion of the reservoir, was a thick jungle.

Darkness had now fallen. The taxi pulled up outside the ashram and Tristan, the only adult in sandals, volunteered to go in and ask about somewhere to be put up for the night. He soon returned to tell us that it would cost us all the cash we had for dormitory beds and that no food was served in the evening, so there was no chance to eat.

So much for the empathy, I had hoped for!

Fortunately, there was also a government-owned ‘Tourist Home’ — Indian-English for a guest house — and so the taxi driver took us on to there.

They had a room big enough for all of us, and at a fraction of the cost of the accommodation at the Sivananda Ashram, and we took it with deep gratitude.

The owner signed us in, asking to see our passports. I explained that we only had two because we had run away from the ‘tidal wave’.

This was met with blank stares. I said in surprise:

“You heard about the big wave?”

He shook his head.

I pointed up at the television above the reception desk.

“The news? Big wave?”

Understanding seemed to slowly wash over him, and he didn’t press for any more passports.

We showered and then put our grubby clothes back on to go down to eat. The owner looked at us in horror and asked if we couldn’t change our clothes and put shoes on our feet. I shrugged and said:

“No shoes. No change of clothes.”

For a moment he looked unsure of whether to allow such a ragged-looking bunch into his restaurant and then let us pass.

We ate and then settled ourselves in our beds to fall asleep to the sound of lions in the jungle beyond the dam and the reservoir. That night, the roars of the lions entered my dreams and became waves on the reservoir that dragged me back with it to its lair. But the morning brought a fresh, cool breeze, sunshine, another day, and another chance.

We were the lucky ones.

This was Part II of a true story from my travels. This series of videos shows footage and experiences of the residents of Amritapuri Ashram and the villages surrounding it.

On 26th December 2004, hundreds of people in these fishing villages along the Keralan coast lost their lives. Amma’s charities organized and funded the construction of safer homes for all those who lost their homes, new boats for the fishermen who lost their means to earn a living, and even offered free Tubal Ligation Reversal in the charity’s hospital, to women who had lost their children to the tsunami.

She also organized and funded the construction of new homes on the east coast, in Tamil Nadu, and on the island of Sri Lanka. Both of these areas suffered destruction on a much larger scale than Kerala, and many thousands of lives were lost.

Thank you for reading. Stay poised for Part III: the return to the coast.

Read Part I here:

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