Safarnama 02 - To pee or not to pee.

Disclaimer - This reading could be a little gross. We South Indians cannot utter the words/ideas used in this post even if subjected to third degree torture. But having been married to a scatalogically superior culture for over a decade has (unfortunately) altered my thresholds. Sorry.

AirBnb, Booking.com, TripAdvisor and the other sites to book a stay have a major flaw. While each of them provides a dozen filters which help us select the comfiest room, with Wi-fi, and a scenic view, a hair dryer and even the provision of toothpaste for the forgetful ones, they do not provide any means to predict/choose the most important amenity which can make or break a holiday - a suitable toilet. The options available in this category are so varied that if gone wrong it has the potential to, well, flush down your entire holiday. In this post I plan to share some of the options I came across in my travels and hope that one of you has the power to do something about it.

Most recently I had the privilege of staying in a village which can only be accessed by trekking 7km uphill along a river. The hosts were the warmest people I ever met. But all forewarnings we were provided about the facilities (or the lack thereof) seemed to have fallen short. The place had no beds, no electricity, no wi-fi, no mobile signal, no taps and no shower. It's star feature was a squat toilet over an open pit inside a corrugated box, placed some distance away from the rest of the mud buildings.

The toilet here gave my London-born son such a fright that he automatically went into dieting mode. But it was too late. In the morning, despite my asking him a dozen times he was confident he didn't need the toilet. However, as soon as we sat down for breakfast he was grimacing, he needed the toilet urgently. Even then he could only brave doing #1, a fairly easy task for boys, and steadfastly refused the need for #2. Then we began our 7km trek downhill. Poor fellow, he was in great labour the first kilometer or so, and then surrendering himself he announced an emergency. He had to finally do #2 in the open, behind a rock as his only cover. And I had the unsavoury job of cleaning him up afterwards in the river, I've taken a vow to make him pay for this later. For the rest of the trek he was the happiest I've ever seen him. A free bird.

If nothing, the stay here gave us a satisfaction that we had seen the absolute bottom, the abyss of the global hospitality industry. Surely you can't go any more basic than that, I thought. I was wrong. Two days later we were at another place which was pretty much the same, except it lacked the mechanism to lock the toilet door from the inside. And since it was the only toilet shared between the hosts, the guests (4 rooms) and their drivers, the lock was quite a critical feature which we had forgotten to check before committing to the room (lesson learnt - toilet lock is first thing to check in a hotel).

This new challenge sent me spinning into flashback mode, to my childhood when I had used a similar toilet. It was the communal toilet in my dad's village which had a worn-out curtain pretending do to the job of a door. The user-instructions from our elders specified us to draw the curtain close and to keep coughing continuously during the entire performance. It was no guarantee against unwanted interruption, but it was the best self-defence available at the time. I used this old wisdom in my new hotel. It was a lot of hard work. So the next morning I did an upgrade - left my son standing outside as a sentry. It worked brilliantly; inside I was smiling on my seat enjoying every bit of the rare moment when I felt like a proud parent.

Money is not always the answer to solve toilet problems. After seven days in the mountains when we finally returned to the city (the Capital) we decided to re-toxify ourselves with urban comforts. We stayed in a five star hotel. We assumed it was perfection created specifically for us, and maybe other guests. That dream was shattered when I, half asleep, used their hand bidet after the morning job. The monstrous device unleashed such a force and sharpness that every cell of me let out a cry. I say with no exaggeration, that device could be used as a weapon in war time, and to cut vegetables in peace time. And here it was in the toilet, with all its potential undiscovered, sodomising unsuspecting guests.

One doesn't have to stay in a hotel to gain unforgettable toilet memories. Some restaurants also offer these privileges.

I (and my Dad) have walked into ladies toilets at least on four occasions (each) because the gender sign was too modern or too creative for us to decipher. Luckily none of the incidents resulted in a visit by the police. On behalf of all the dim-witted people I'm compelled to ask - Why can't the signs be simple enough for everyone to understand? Why this discrimination against us?

Sometimes there are other kinds of surprises awaiting us inside. One time (in a roadside restaurant in Eastern Europe) I walked into a toilet which had 5 WCs (commodes) but no partitions between them (a la Roman toilet). Luckily, we were the only party that had stopped by at that time. The cleverest idea the restaurant builders had was to partition the men's section from the women's. Because of that thoughtful design, I and a friend's wife came out of the toilet beaming, and relieved at not having seen each other inside.

In other places asking for a toilet has resulted in a guided tour outside the restaurant building, along the compound wall, followed by jumping over the wall into the neighbour's garden, then softly stepping past a sleeping dog before being shown a plastic sheet made ramshackle structure. That was the restaurant's only toilet for their guests. And I won't even try describing the inside, I'll spare you that assault.

Due to my slightly conservative upbringing I'm very hesitant to pee in the open, unless it's an absolute emergency and I'm miles away from civilisation. I'd rather wait for the next available toilet a couple of hours away. But when that long painful wait ends at a toilet like the ones I've have described, I wonder if it was all worth it. And in the next similar situation, when nature calls me at an odd time, to pee or not to pee becomes a frustratingly tough call.

The End

The trek uphill to the village.

I didn't take any picture of the toilet here unfortunately. It was somewhere on the right of these animal pens and fodder storages.

The host with my son. Our room was the house behind them.

My last picture of the village before we started the trek downhill.

On the way downhill. These waters have now been polluted.

The toilet without the door lock.

Steps to help jump over the wall into neighbour's property.