Catastrophic flash floods and landslides along the Nepal-Tibet border in August 2026 killed hundreds of people and left thousands more missing, but a video circulating on social media showing a Buddha statue standing serenely in floodwaters predates the disaster by nearly two years. The statue is located in Bharatpur, Nepal, and the footage was filmed during flooding in September 2024.
"The statue of Buddha stands amid the floodwaters, with muddy water submerging its base, yet it remains serenely unmoved," says part of the simplified Chinese caption of an X video shared on August 27, 2026.
"In the face of disaster, there is only so much people can do, but this scene suddenly brought people to a state of quiet," the caption continues, alongside the hashtags "Nepal Floods" and "Tibet Gyirong Landslides".
The video shows a Buddha statue standing strong against rushing floodwaters.
The same footage was also shared in similar Weibo and Facebook posts, as well as by Indian media organisations such as India Today and The Sentinel, after a devastating tsunami-like wall of water tore through the Nepal-Tibet border region on August 26 ( archived link).
Figures from Nepal and from Chinese authorities in charge of Tibet put the total number of missing close to 3,000 with 691 bodies recovered as of August 30, underscoring the scale of the disaster that swept away entire villages ( archived link).
The US Geological Survey said the disaster -- the deadliest for Nepal since a 2015 earthquake -- was caused by a glacial collapse that triggered a vast flow of icy debris.
But the circulating video predates the August 26 disaster.
A reverse image search using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to a similar clip posted on YouTube almost two years earlier, on September 28, 2024 ( archived link).
Nepalese media organisation Republica published a similar image in a September 28, 2024 report about water levels in the Narayani river reaching a dangerous threshold ( archived link).
At the time, large swathes of Nepal had been inundated with monsoon downpours that triggered deadly floods and landslides ( archived link).
Features of a geotagged Google Maps photo of the statue on the Narayani river in Bharatpur, in Nepal's Chitwan District, resemble the falsely shared video ( archived link).
The statue is more than 110 kilometres (around 68 miles) from the Nepal-Tibet border, where the August 26 disaster occurred.
An aerial video showing the debris-littered banks of the Narayani river on August 26 shows the water level near the Buddha statue, at around the 30-second mark, is not as high as depicted in the falsely shared video (archived here and here).
People who live near the statue told AFP via WhatsApp on August 28 that flooding there was not as massive as the falsely shared video shows, but it did bring a lot of debris.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Nepal-Tibet floods.