Taft Point, Yosemite National Park. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers, File) Taft Point, Yosemite National Park. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers, File) In a tragic incident, an Indian couple died after falling 800 feet in an area with steep terrain in California’s Yosemite National Park this week, according to a media report. Vishnu Viswanath, 29, and Meenakshi Moorthy, 30, fell to their deaths from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. They were identified Monday as a married couple from India living in the United States, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The report said that the couple had recently moved from New York after Viswanath took a job as a systems engineer at Cisco, based in San Jose. Together, they chronicled their adventures of travelling around the world in a blog called ‘Holidays and HappilyEverAfters’. Rangers recovered their bodies on the steep terrain Thursday below Taft Point, a popular tourist spot that offers spectacular views of the Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Falls, and El Capitan. Visitors had spotted the bodies a day earlier. A male and female visitor died in an apparent fall from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. Park rangers are recovering the bodies this morning. This incident is under investigation and no further details are available. https://t.co/wTm1IadB79 — Yosemite National Park (@YosemiteNPS) October 25, 2018 Park spokesman Jamie Richards was quoted as saying in the report that “We still do not know what caused them to fall. We’re trying to understand what happened. We may never know, (but) from everything we see, this was a tragic fall.” Investigators were looking into how the couple fell or what had occurred when the accident happened at the famous spot which is a favourite place for tourists from around the world to take scenic and memorable photos. Earlier, the National Park Service had said in a statement that the recovery operation for a male and female visitor who had died in the fall from Taft Point was completed on the afternoon of October 25. The department said 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 report added that the couple had been married since 2014 and both were software engineers. On the cover of Viswanath’s Facebook page is a picture of the two of them smiling on the edge of a cliff at the Grand Canyon. In a Facebook post, College of Engineering, Chengannur said the two were its alumni and added that it deeply mourns their “accidental demise”. The college said Viswanath and Moorthy belonged to the BTech 2006-10 Computer Science and Engineering batch. “Our hearts go to the friends and family members of this lovely couple. May their souls rest in peace,” the college said. Raj Katta, 24, of New York, said he got to know both of them while attending Bradley University, in Illinois. He said Viswanath was a “thoughtful and amazing guy, very talented. They are a really happy couple. Very positive.” Katta described Moorthy as extremely positive and enthusiastic. “She’s one of those girls who wants to explore the world and discover a deeper meaning in life.” He said in the report that Viswanath and Moorthy had decided six months ago that he would take the job at Cisco and they would live in California for a year or so.<doc-sep>The two people who fell to their deaths from a popular overlook in California’s Yosemite National Park were a married couple from India who were living and working in the United States, officials said. Park rangers recovered the bodies of 29-year-old Vishnu Viswanath and 30-year-old Meenakshi Moorthy from about 800 feet below Taft Point, where visitors can walk to the edge of a vertigo-inducing granite ledge that doesn’t have a railing. “Yosemite National Park continues to investigate this case, which will take several weeks,” park officials wrote in a news release Monday. The couple graduated from the College of Engineering in Chengannur in 2006 in computer science and engineering. They loved travelling and maintained a website called “Holidays and Happily Ever Afters” about their travel adventures, and described themselves as a “dream doer duo.” Meenakshi describes herself as the one “diagnosed with the curious case of interminable travel bug” The Mercury News called Meenakshi “a free-spirited Harry Potter fan who dyed her hair pink and ominously warned people on social media about the dangers of falling from cliffs and tall buildings while trying to take spectacular photos.” The couple’s social media pages and their travel website is full of chronicles of their travel from all over the world. It was not clear how the couple fell or what they were doing when the accident occurred. A friend of the couple said they were on a driving trip from New York and were seeing the sights in California at the time. The San Francisco Chronicle writes the couple had recently moved from New York after Viswanath took a job as a systems engineer at Cisco Systems Inc., based in San Jose, according to a friend. BBC.com reports the latest deaths come just one week after a photo of the Taft Point lookout went viral, when a photographer captured a wedding proposal amidst the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains.<doc-sep>
holidaysandhappilyeverafters | Photo Credit: Instagram New York: In a tragic incident, an Indian couple fell to their deaths from Taft Point in California's Yosemite National Park last week. They were on Monday identified as Vishnu Viswanath (29) and Meenakshi “Minaxi” Moorthy (30), the alumni of the College of Engineering, Chengannur in Kerala. The couple had hiked to Taft Point, a famous tourist spot that offers breathtaking views of the Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Falls, and El Capitan, and fell approximately 800 feet. The couple had moved to California from New York in June after Vishnu took a job as a systems engineer at San Jose-based Cisco. Their profiles on the social media reveal that the duo were travel enthusiasts. In fact, they used to chronicle their adventures of travelling extensively around the world in a blog called 'Holidays and HappilyEverAfters'. The couple, both software engineers by profession, had been married since 2009. The cover of Vishnu’s Facebook page shows him and Minaxi smiling on the edge of a cliff at the Grand Canyon, where the couple visited in March. Minaxi too posted a picture of the trip on Instagram with her back to the camera. She is seen sitting on a ledge and looking at a sunset. "A lot of us including yours truly is a fan of daredevilry attempts of standing at the edge of cliffs and skyscrapers," reads the photo's caption, "but did you know that wind gusts can be FATAL??? Is our life just worth one photo?" The happy pictures of Vishnu and Minaxi are all over their social media profiles. In the words of Minaxi Moorthy, the pair was a "dream doer duo”. Their poses in some of the pictures seem to be lifted straight out of Bollywood movies. With the help of rappelling techniques, technical climbing, and helicopter support from the California Highway Patrol, Park Rangers recovered Vishnu and Minaxi’s bodies last Thursday on the steep terrain below Taft Point. Tourists had spotted the bodies on Wednesday. It has not been ascertained what exactly happened and how the couple fell. "We still do not know what caused them to fall. We're trying to understand what happened. We may never know, (but) from everything we see, this was a tragic fall," said Park spokesman Jamie Richards. Meanwhile, in a Facebook post, College of Engineering, Chengannur said that the two were its alumni and belonged to the BTech 2006-10 Computer Science and Engineering batch. "Our hearts go to the friends and family members of this lovely couple. May their souls rest in peace,” the college said.