Madikeri: For 10 agonising minutes on Monday morning, Sai Charan and Ganesh Nayak stared directly at death. Stranded on a slippery rock in the middle of a roaring Mallalli falls, the two Bengaluru students could only watch as a sudden wall of water from an upstream check dam threatened to sweep them away.What began as a carefree getaway with three friends, quickly transformed into a desperate struggle for survival. Enticed by the deceptively low water levels, the duo had jumped a safety fence to step into the riverbed, unaware that the gates of a check dam just 200 metres upstream were about to open.When the water arrived, it came without warning. “The water rose from our ankles to our chests in what felt like seconds,” a visibly shaken Sai Charan said, recalling the sheer terror of the moment. “The roar of the waterfall was so deafening that we could not even hear our friends screaming from the bank. I honestly thought we were going to be washed over the edge, and I just closed my eyes and prayed and held the rock as tightly as I can.”As the gushing currents slammed into them, the two held onto each other and a jagged rock formation, their feet slipping continuously. On the riverbank, their friends panicked, quickly alerting the Tourist Mitra staff. While emergency calls were made to govt officials to shut the dam gates, locals rushed to fetch ropes from a nearby house.For Ganesh Nayak, those 10 minutes felt like an eternity as they waited for the water flow to recede. “Every second the current was getting heavier, and my hands were losing their grip,” Nayak said. “When we saw the locals throwing a rope toward us, it felt like a lifeline dropping from the sky. We knew we had only one chance to grab it, and we held on with everything we had left.”With the combined efforts of local villagers, visiting tourists, and fire brigade personnel, the duo managed to pull themselves through the receding currents to the safety of the bank, miraculously escaping without any physical injuries.The Somwarpet police later enquired into the incident and let the students off with a severe warning. While the close call has left them deeply rattled, it stands as a stark reminder of the fatal risks of defying safety barriers at tourist hotspots as the authorities immediately imposed restrictions on tourists not to venture close to the popular falls.
