It was once a gently flowing river, where fishermen cast their nets, sea birds came to feed and natural beauty left visitors spellbound.
Villagers collected water for their simple homes and rice paddies thrived on its irrigation channels.
Today, the Citarum (in Indonesia) is a river in crisis, choked by the domestic waste of nine million people and thick with the cast-off from hundreds of factories.
So dense is the carpet of refuse that the tiny wooden fishing craft which float through it are the only clue to the presence of water.
