Nickname the cursed river, the Chambal River is a tributary of the Yamuna River in central India that flows north-northeast through Madhya Pradesh, running for a time through Rajasthan, then forming the boundary between Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh before turning southeast to join the Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh state. Over the years, the river that flows through the rugged, hidden corner of northern India's industrial belt has received a series of curses. There was an actual curse at first, a long-held belief that the Chambal River was unholy. There was the land itself, and the more earthly curse of its poor-quality soil. And above all there were the bandits, hiding in the badlands and causing countless eruptions of violence and fear.

But instead of destroying the river, the curses protected it by keeping the outside world away. The isolation created a sanctuary for crocodiles and jackals, of river dolphins and the occasional wolf. Hundreds of species of birds — storks, geese, babblers, larks, falcons and many species of endangered birds nest along the river. Gharials, rare crocodile-like creatures that look like they swaggered out of the Mesozoic Era, are commonplace here and nowhere else.

Tucked in a hidden corner of what is now a deeply polluted region, where the stench of industrial fumes fills the air in dozens of towns and tons of raw sewage is dumped every day into many rivers, the Chambal has remained essentially wild.