Video shows high-speed train passing through tunnels in China, not India

Indian transport officials said they were aiming to finish the country's massive railway construction project in northern Uttarakhand state by December 2025. However, footage of a high-speed train passing through mountain tunnels has been viewed millions of times in posts that falsely portrayed it as the completed Indian railway project in October 2024. The video was actually filmed in China's central Hunan province.

"Watch this train speeding between Devprayag and Srinagar in Uttarakhand and feel relieved about where your tax money is being spent," read the Hindi-language caption of a post shared on Facebook on October 10, 2024.

Devprayag and Srinagar are two of the 12 stations in the Rishikesh-Karnaprayag railway project, which will span 125 kilometres of railway track in the hilly northern Indian state of Uttarakhand (archived links here and here).

The video shows a high-speed train going through tunnels on a mountain railway track along a river.

The video has also been viewed over two million times alongside similar claims on Facebook and on social media site X.

The railway line, however, remains under construction.

"The work on this railway line in Uttarakhand is still incomplete and the target is to complete it by December 2025. The track itself is not yet complete," Ajit Singh Yadav, chief manager of the Uttarakhand rail line project, told AFP on October 16.

India's Ministry of Railways earlier shared pictures on X on September 19 showing ongoing construction work on the rail line (archived link).

The circulating video shows a railway track in China's Hunan province.

China high-speed train

A reverse image search followed by keyword searches on Google found the same video uploaded on TikTok's Chinese version Douyin on October 2, 2024.

A comment on the post said the video was recorded near Yanbodu town in Cili County of China's Hunan Province.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip shared in the false posts (left) and the video uploaded on Douyin (right):

The Hunan-based user shared another video shot from a similar aerial angle on the railway track on October 5, 2024.

The same video was shared by other users on Douyin here and here, and on Instagram here with captions that it is located in Yanbodu Town of Hunan Province (archived link).

Further keyword searches led to a longer version of the clip on YouTube and on X (archived links here and here).

Satellite imagery of Cili county on Google Earth corresponds to the visuals in the longer version of the video (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of frames from the video (left) and images from Google Earth (right) with similar elements highlighted:

AFP has previously debunked visuals of Chinese railways that have been passed off as India here and here.