This rest room overlooks the Swiss alps. Picture: Roelof Nijholt / 500px
TOILETS can be the worst part of travelling. There are signs in foreign languages to confuse you, unfamiliar hygiene practices to puzzle over, and awkward situations like plane turbulence and moving trains to navigate.
But at some perfectly placed potties, answering the call of nature can actually become a highlight of your trip.
Lonely Planet’s latest book, Toilets: A Spotter’s Guide, celebrates the world’s most unique places to take a pit stop.
“As any experienced traveller knows,” Lonely Planet says in the book’s introduction, “you can tell a whole lot about a place by its bathrooms. Whatever you prefer to call them — lavatory, loo, bog, khasi, thunderbox, dunny, washroom or water closet — toilets are a (sometimes opaque, often wide-open) window into the secret soul of a destination.
“In these pages, you’ll find porcelain pews with fantastic views, audacious attention-seeking urban outhouses, and eco-thrones made from sticks and stones in all sorts of wild settings, from precipitous mountain peaks to dusty deserts”.
photo galleryWorld’s most amazing loo views
Outhouse, Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal: At 6812m high, eastern Nepal’s Ama Dablam might not be one of the tallest Himalayan peaks, but it’s possibly the most eye-poppingly beautiful. And there’s no better place to sit and contemplate its magnificence than on the perfectly positioned throne at the lodge-village of Chukhung, 2000m beneath the summit. Picture: David Ruiz Luna / 500px
Toilet island, near Placencia, Belize: Eat your heart out Robinson Crusoe. This paradisiacal punctuation mark in the Caribbean Sea off Placencia, Belize, boasts its own flushing throne, from where the king or queen of the castaways can survey their desert-island domain. It’s a long way to the shops when you run out of paper, though… Picture: Tomas Mahring
Scott Duncan Hut outhouse, Alberta, Canada: To reach Scott Duncan Hut, 19km from Lake Louise on the northwest ridge of Mt Daly in Canada’s Banff National Park, you need to traverse the unforgiving terrain of the Wapta Icefields. The effort is well worth it, if only for an outhouse boasting the best view in the New World. Picture: Paul Zizka / Getty Images
Huldefossen waterfall, Norway: No need to run the tap while perching on this picturesque potty next to the cacophonous Huldefossen Waterfall near Forde in Norway; the sound of thousands of gallons of water rushing over the 90m drop should drown out any unwanted acoustics. Norway boasts nine of the world’s 20 highest waterfalls. Picture: Roelof Nijholt / 500px
Krafla, Iceland: This ever-so-alfresco ablution station in the middle of the Icelandic outback, near Krafla Geothermal Power Station, is an enigma. No one seems to know who installed it, or why, but that doesn’t worry happy hikers who, after stumbling across it, invariably Instagram images of themselves perched on the pan. Picture: Marco Stupan / 500px
Restrooms with a view, Chang La Pass, India: One of the unexpected effects of high altitude on the human body is the sudden need for a toilet stop – these strategically positioned public toilets perched on the top of Chang La, a 5425m-high Himalaya pass near Leh in Ladakh, India, provide a restroom with a top-of-the-world view. Picture: Patrick Horton / Getty Images
St Peter-Ording, Germany: The sea reigns supreme in Germany’s Northern Friesland, with several villages having been entirely swallowed by storm tides in previous centuries. Around St Peter-Ording, the swell can reach 3m high, and dunes have a habit of moving, so from 1910, the community began building structures on stilts – including the public toilets. Picture: Imagebroker / Alamy Stock Photo
Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada: This well-weathered and atmospheric outhouse stands amid a mossy green rainforest dreamscape at Skidegate on Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands), in Canada’s British Columbia. Skidegate is a Haida First Nations community, historically targeted by European settlers pursuing the lucrative trade in sea otter pelts. Picture: Mark Unrau / Getty Images
Segantini hut restroom, Switzerland: Austrian-born 19th-century painter Giovanni Segantini lived his last years in a St Moritz alpine aerie now known as Segantini Hut, capturing the Swiss peaks with his palette. The hut, perched at 2731m, is currently a lodge, where visitors to the iconic outhouse enjoy eye-watering valley views of the Engadine. Picture: Hans Georg Eiben / Getty Images
Tonto Trail, Grand Canyon National Park, USA: Limited privacy is the trade-off for sensational views from the hot seats of these composting campsite toilets on the 112km long Tonto Trail through Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. Instead of going rim-to-rim, the Tonto Trail traces the Colorado River, traversing the bench separating the inner gorge from the upper canyon. Picture: James Capo / 500px
Desert toilet, the Siloli, Bolivia: You can forget frills, privacy and shelter in this open-air latrine in the arid heart of Bolivia’s Siloli Desert, but there’s never a queue for the toilet. The Siloli, a continuation of the Atacama Desert in neighbouring Chile, is famed for wind-sculpted rock formations such as Arbol de Piedra (Stone Tree). Picture: Robert Downie / 500px
Jungle toilet, Vang Vieng, Laos: Vang Vieng in Laos was once infamous for raucous jungle parties, full of wasted Westerners tubing along the tree-lined Nam Song River. The illegal bars were closed in 2012, and now better-behaved travellers can enjoy a more tranquil experience – although answering a call of nature still feels pretty wild. Picture: Michael Martinho / 500px
Lonely Planet’s Toilets: A Spotter’s Guide is out now. RRP: $14.99.
Lonely Planet’s Toilets: A Spotter’s Guide is out now. RRP: $14.99.
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