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Photo of road in India, not Maai Mahiu highway in Kenya

A Facebook user shared a photo of a line of trucks on a road winding along a steep mountainside.

“On my way to SGR Maai Mahiu station but jam ya malori hapa in noma,” he captioned it. With the Kiswahili translated, this reads as: “On my way to SGR Maai Mahiu station but there is a lorry traffic jam. It’s messy.”

“SGR” is Kenya’s standard gauge railway.

On 16 October 2019 Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta inaugurated the Maai Mahiu passenger terminal on the railway line from the capital of Nairobi to the town of Suswa in the Great Rift Valley. 

The Maai Mahiu highway connects Nairobi and the town of Maai Mahi in Nakuru county, to the north-west of the capital. At certain points, the road looks like the one on Facebook.

But is the photo of the Maai Mahiu highway? We checked.



Snapped in Kashmir, India


A reverse image search gives a hint that the photo may show a road in India.

A clearer version, on Twitter, is captioned: “Dangerous, yet breathtaking! Kargil to Srinagar road in Jammu and Kashmir.”

This version clearly has a watermark, which can also be seen on the photo on Facebook. It reads “© Himanshu Khagta”, and gives the website www.khagta.com

Himanshu Khagta is a travel photographer who has taken many photos of the Indian Himalayas. 

The image can be found on Khagta’s website. Here it’s titled: “Zoji La Pass, Kashmir”.  

Photo from 2009


Africa Check asked Khagta about the photo. 

“This is a picture I took in 2009 at Zojila Pass in Jammu and Kashmir, India,” he told us. “It’s in the Himalayas.” – Dancan Bwire




 

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