I have no idea how the roads will be. I would avoid any coastal areas. Galle is out – too much damage. But Kandy and the cultural triangle are nowhere near any affected areas.
Shock – it’s understandable. I’m finally getting over it mostly, I think. But you haven’t had as much time to deal with the information as I did – you’re still several hours behind!
I have no idea at this point how travel will be affected. I could take guesses, and among that, I would think that travel will be slower and more inconvenient than normal. People are concentrating on finding their loved ones. Sri Lanka currently has about 5000 listed as deceased and another 10,000 missing. Then there are all the injured – no numbers on that. Plus at least a million are now homeless, but all in the coastal regions. I would also think that life away from the affected areas will be relatively unchanged. I don’t know – just projecting.
Oh – yes, continue to assume that Fahim and I are fine. We’re over a dozen kilometres from the affected areas, and the only difference here are the vans driving up and down our street asking for donations and the doorbell ringing for the same purpose. There are donation booths set up on the main road as well. But where we are, other than that, everything is completely normal.
I can do some of the budgeting for the trip, but not today, and tomorrow is likely no better either. I don’t feel like it, for one thing, plus I’m a little drained from all this earthquake business. You know that it’s now registered as a 9.0? And there have been more than two dozen aftershocks since, all measuring 5 to 7.3 thus far. And it’s going to continue for several more days. Plus Sri Lanka is experiencing earthquakes as well for the last couple of weeks – a new fault line is forming just south of the island, so Sri Lanka is now in an earthquake zone.
Ugh.