New Delhi: On Friday, Erik Solheim, a Norwegian diplomat and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, tweeted a two-second YouTube clip of what he said was a “water highway in India”.
The video, which Solheim shared with the caption “Incredible India! I finally encountered the most beautiful water highway”, showed multiple vehicles wading through water on a submerged highway.
The video was viewed over 687 thousand times.
Solheim has approximately 290 thousand followers. The tweet had roughly 21 thousand likes and was shared over 2500 times before it was deleted.
People who shared the video took pride in “India’s beautiful water highway”, with even some tagging Nitin Gadkari, India’s Minister for Road Transport & Highways.
Incredible India 🇮🇳!
Most Beautiful Water #Highway @nitin_gadkari @NationalHways pic.twitter.com/C5K3LQOOBT— Swatantra Shukla (@Swatantra_media) September 16, 2022
Incredible India 🇮🇳!
I finally encountered the most beautiful water highway #TejRan #BiggBoss16 #BiggBoss16 #KareenaKapoorKhan #RichaChadha #T20WorldCup #PriyankaChopra#SaakiniDaakini #SidharthMalhotra #SidNaaz #BellaOurObsession #Ramsetu #AryanKhan pic.twitter.com/adqYEfCtSM
— Dainik Samachar (@DainikSamachar5) September 16, 2022
Among those who shared it was Zee news anchor and journalist Sumit Chaudhary.
Incredible India 🇮🇳!
the most beautiful water highway pic.twitter.com/PqzVIVvfvA
— Sumit Chaudhary (@SumitDefence) September 17, 2022
The truth about the video
The road shown in the video is Yongxiu-Wucheng Road, a road built across Poyang Lake in China’s Jiujiang. This 29.9 km long road is often submerged due to rain storms in the Jiujiang city as the water levels of the lake begin to rise with the onset of the rainy season towards the end of May.
This water level rises to over 18.67 meters during the rainy season.
The original video was shared by the Chinese state-controlled newspaper, People’s Daily, on Facebook.