The once tranquil villages of Mundakkai and Chooralmala near Meppadi in Wayanad were surrounded by lush forest, but in the early hours of Tuesday what the surviving families of the massive landslides there witnessed was the unforgiving ferocity of nature's destructive forces.

As many as 177 people have died and 200 have been injured in the massive landslides that hit Wayanad district two days ago, with the numbers expected to rise as rescuers continue to unearth bodies buried in the debris, the district administration said on Thursday.

The 177 dead include 25 children and 70 women.

Survivors narrated the chilling experience etched into their memories forever.

Talking to the media from a relief camp at Meppadi, an elderly woman, Sujatha, who worked at the tea estate there, narrated the astounding account of how she and her grandchild spent the night next to a wild tusker and remained unharmed by the animal as they watched everything she owned get destroyed by the landslide.

"We barely escaped from our toppling house. We ran to a nearby hill at the edge of the forest. Once we reached there, we realised that we were standing next to a tusker," Sujatha said.

She said she spoke to the wild elephant as she would to a human. "I told him (the elephant) that we lost everything and asked him not to attack us. We spent the entire night next to him," she said.

Other survivors of the landslides, Sirajudeen and his family, bore witness to the unimaginable, watching helplessly as their home, including the means of his livelihood, an autorickshaw, crumbled beneath the weight of monstrous boulders.

Sirajudeen said he heard loud noises and water gushing past in the early hours of Tuesday. When they saw muddy water gushing into their home, they somehow scrambled to the higher ground behind their house.

"We saw huge boulders and trees crushing everything we had. Our autorickshaw is completely destroyed," the family, which was visibly shaken, said, talking to reporters.

Before the landslide, they felt the house shaking and the air fill up with the distinctive smell of uprooted vegetation and wet earth, they said.

Ganesh, who belongs to Chooralmala and works as a security guard, had came home late on Monday night.

"As I reached home, I saw muddy water and woke up my wife who was sleeping. I didn't waste a single second. We left the house and went to a nearby hilltop," the grey-haired man said.

He lost his sister, her husband, her sister's son and daughter-in-law, as well as her sister's grandchildren.

"As the water rose, we ran to the hilltop. We saw my sister's house being washed away in the first landslide. The second landslide took away my house too," he said, speaking of the horrors he witnessed.

Luckily, his children were at a relative's place in Mananthavady.

Some survivors have been on the lookout for their missing loved ones. A father was seen crying for help to identify his 14-year-old daughter.

"My youngest daughter is missing. Unless I can identify her, I will not believe that she is gone. I will consider that she has gone to some faraway place for higher studies," he said, breaking down.

His daughter Anamika, a ninth standard student, was staying with her grandmother, who lived nearby.

Even though her father came out of the house hearing the loud noises of the landslide, all he could do was watch helplessly as the house with his mother and daughter got washed away.

Two brothers Madhavan and Nanjundan who hail from Mysuru have come to Meppadi in search of their sister and brother-in-law, who were working at a tea estate there.

"We had asked them to come and stay with us for one week until the rain was over. But they did not come. My elder brother Madhavan came here, asking them to shift to Mysuru for a week, two days before the landslide," Nanjundan told the media.

At the relief camps, people narrated stories of homes that had sheltered generations of their families being overturned and buried by the landlslides that left behind nothing but a haunting landscape of loss and despair.

According to the latest reports, 25 children are among those who lost their lives.

Several people remain missing and rescue teams are battling adverse conditions, including waterlogged soil, as they search through destroyed homes and buildings for survivors or bodies.

According to the government's official estimate on Wednesday evening, 191 people are missing, though official sources indicate that the actual number may be much higher.

The landslides occurred around 2 am and 4.10 am on Tuesday, catching people off-guard while they were sleeping, therefore leading to a high number of casualties.

The picturesque hamlets of Mundakkai, Chooralmala, Attamala, and Noolpuzha are the ones devastated by the massive landslides triggered by torrential rains.

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