October 8, 2009
A British daredevil’s vacation bungee jump went horribly wrong when his cord came loose and he hit the water at 80 miles an hour — but miraculously, he survived.
Rishi Baveja, 21, told “FOX & Friends” Wednesday that he didn’t even know the rope around his ankles had slipped off during his videotaped 165-foot leap in Thailand until the very end.
“I didn’t know anything was wrong until I hit the water,” he said by phone from his home in the U.K.
Baveja was on a month-long trip in the resort town of Phuket to celebrate getting his engineering degree from Cambridge, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
That holiday turned into a month-long stay in the hospital in Bangkok, where doctors treated him for collapsed lungs, a torn liver and a ruptured spleen, among other injuries.
Somehow, Baveja escaped any major head trauma in the fall. The video shows him making the sign of the cross before he jumped.
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“Maybe that’s what kept me alive, I don’t know,” he told “FOX & Friends.” “I was definitely scared. The only thought going through my head was, get to the surface, get to the surface.”
He said two men pulled him out once he did come up for air.
In the seconds-long footage, which Baveja bought from the company before the accident, the tourist jumps feet first from the ledge with the bungee attached before it comes off and he plummets into the lagoon below.
He wants to bungee again someday, but only if he gets permission from one very important person in his life.
“Hopefully, one day, when I can convince Mum to let me do it again — definitely,” he told “FOX & Friends.”
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