This video does not show the confluence of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna. - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 9, 2022
A post with a video is being shared on social media, claiming that it shows the confluence of two water bodies of distinct colours. The post states the location as Prayagraj, and the rivers are Ganga and Yamuna. Let’s fact-check these claims.
Claim: The visuals show the confluence of river Ganga and river Yamuna in Prayagraj.
Fact: This video shows China’s Yellow river merging with the Bohai Sea. Hence the post is Misleading.
Rerverse image search on Yandex with the video screenshots led to a video that claims the waterbodies as the Rivers Amazon and Tapajos. Searching on the Internet with relevant keywords, we found a few videos which say the Amazon river meets the Tapojas river in Brazil.
We looked for clues from the original video to establish and confirm the location. A red coloured flag can be seen on the yacht in the viral video. The flag has yellow spots. We searched on the Internet with relevant keywords and found that it is the flag of China.
Upon searching the internet for river confluences in China, we found news reports by ETV and Wion news about the Yellow River merging with the Bohai Sea. These news reposts can be seen here and here. One water body is brownish, and the other is greenish blue; this matches the colour of the water bodies in the viral video.
A South China Morning Post video confirms that this scene only occurs between July and October when the Yellow river surges. Boat tours are also available for people to witness this event. The Boat from the video report is identical to the Boat in the viral post; even the Chinese flag is in the same position on both boats.
With this evidence, we can conclude that the waterbodies merging in the video are the Yellow river and Bohai sea in China.
However, the Rivers Ganga and Yamuna meeting in Prayagraj is a fact, and the confluence of these two is known as the Triveni Sangam- The confluence of three rivers, Ganga, Yamuna and theriver Saraswathi. This video shows the confluence of these rivers in Prayagraj.
To Summarise, the confluence of the Yellow river and the Bohai Sea in China is shared falsely as the meeting of River Ganga and River Yamuna in Prayagraj.