Lighthouse Journalism came across a video and a few screenshots from the same claimed to be of traffic congestion on the way to Kedarnath. During the investigation we found the claim to be false. The video is from Pakistan and old.
Claim:
Instagram user Kedarnath live shared the video adding the location Kedarnath to the hashtag.
Check the archive version of the video.
Other users too are sharing the video and a screenshot with the same claim.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by running reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video.
Through this we found an old news report on the website of Tribune India.
The news report was about the same video, it mentioned, ‘A 23-second viral video of traffic snarl, reported to be of tourists returning from Himachal Pradesh after a massive landslide in Kinnaur that killed 9 people, is reportedly fake.’
We also found the video on the Facebook page of ‘Halaat Updates‘ posted on 25 July, 2021.
The caption mentioned: This is probably the worst Traffic jam in Kaghan Valley, people are stuck there from 2 to 3 days now facing Fuel & food problem, thousands of people entered for eid celebrations & still stucked ..
Kaghan Valley is an alpine valley in Balakot Tehsil, Mansehra District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
We found the screenshot of this video on a Pakistan news website.
The report on July 26, 2021 mentioned, ‘Tourists have flocked to the Kaghan valley of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Mansehra district in record numbers this Eidul Azha, with hundreds of thousands of vehicles choking the roads and causing traffic jams in the scenic tourist site, a private TV channel reported on Sunday.’
We also found a video report on the YouTube channel of ARY News. The video uploaded on July 26, 2021 was titled: Roads blocked, hotels full, tourist stuck on roads towards kaghan
ARY News is a Pakistani News channel, launched in 2004.
Conclusion: Old video of Kaghan Valley, Pakistan resurfaces as recent video of traffic congestion while on the way to Kedarnath. Viral claims are false.
