Updates

I've been reading over e-mails from my brother from when he was in India recently. It's disturbing to think that the places he talks about visiting may not be there any more. There was a man who practiced Ayurvedic (sp?) medicine in Pondicherry on the east coast of India who lives in a house by the beach. Scott got a weird massage from him, and was covered in mud and left to bake on the flat roof. Pondicherry proper has reported about 400 deaths, but the region, including neighbouring Tamil Nadu, has reported many thousand. Who knows if he's still alive.

While we watched the video reports on the news Scott kept interrupting with 'I've been on that beach' and 'I know a guy who lives there'. If it hadn't been for a bout of malaria he might have stayed on in India, or continued as planned to Sri Lanka.

A train was derailed between Colombo and Gaul in Sri Lanka. It's feared that up to 1,000 passengers were killed.

There was a young British woman on the news about an hour ago, describing how she had been caught on a speedboat tour of the islands surrounding Phi Phi in Thailand. The tour was illegal, as the driver didn't have a radio or any lifejackets. When the first swells came in he dumped his passengers on a private island and made a break for it. The passengers watched from the shore as a huge wave shattered the boat, killing the driver and his assistant.

Following that was an interview with a German man trying to fly home. His two young daughters survived, but he watched his wife drown. His voice was cracking as he described how his daughters were crying out for her as she slipped under the water. I've never seen anything so heartbreaking.