The couple- Vishnu Viswanath and Meenakshi Moorthy.
Two people, who fell to their death from the edge of a cliff at the Yosemite National Park in the United States last week, have been identified as a young couple from Kerala who loved to travel a lot and maintained a website to document their adventures.
Vishnu Viswanath, 29, and his wife Meenakshi Moorthy, who grew up in Kerala before moving to the US for employment, died after slipping off the Taft Point, a scenic spot 3500 ft high overlooking the Yosemite Valley in California on Tuesday. It took two days for Park officials to retrieve the two bodies, found mangled beyond recognition.
“The two people fell approximately 800 feet below Taft Point in an area with very steep terrain. This recovery operation involved Park Rangers using technical climbing and rappelling techniques, in addition to helicopter support from the California Highway Patrol for a short-haul operation,” the Park said in a statement.
Viswanath and Moorthy, both IT professionals, had been married for four years and belonged to Kannur and Kottayam districts in Kerala respectively. Their families were informed by the Indian Consulate on Saturday after the bodies were identified with the help of their driving licenses. They both studied at the College of Engineering in Chengannur where they graduated with a degree in computer science in 2010. Viswanath’s LinkedIn page said he was employed with Cisco Systems in the US.
It’s still not clear how the couple fell from the popular viewpoint which attracts thousands of trekkers and tourists every year. However, accidents are not uncommon at the Yosemite National Park. Just last month, a teenager from Israel died after falling off a cliff near the Nevada Fall reportedly while trying to take a selfie. The Taft Point, which offers breathtaking views of the Yosemite Valley and El Capitan, has even witnessed weddings.
The young Malayali couple, who described themselves as a ‘dreamer-doer duo’ on Instagram, maintained a website called ‘Holidays and Happily Everafters’ where they posted regular updates and photographs about their journeys across the world.
Ironically, in March this year, the couple posted a photograph on their Instagram page showing Moorthy sitting at the edge of the Grand Canyon alongside a post in which they warned about the dangers of daredevilry and risking lives to take photographs on mountaintops and cliffs.
“A lot of us including yours truly is a fan of daredevilry attempts of standing at the edge of cliffs and skyscrapers, but did you know that wind gusts can be FATAL??? Is our life just worth one photo?” the post read.
“Let us all try to be responsible digital citizens and use our “numbers” to be transparent and honest, shall we? None of us is perfect and the more we accept it and share our flaws as much as our wins, we are one step closer to creating a sane social media without the scary brouhahas,” they wrote.
In another Instagram post from November last year, Moorthy wrote, “Please be careful standing at the edge of canyons/mountains/high rise buildings. The wind gusts are extremely dangerous and your adrenaline rage is not worth your life.”