Restroom facilities were a big concern for us prior to leaving the states. We have friends that have traveled to India so we heard the “horror” stories of no toilet paper and only buckets of water to wash your hands and wash down the excrement. One friend got quite ill. We’ve also spent time in both Central and South America where one is provided a bucket for used toilet paper of which you must supply your own. So this part was not going to be a problem should we encounter that. The concerns were: sanitary conditions and supply of paper. There,  I think that sums it up. The LAST thing either of us wanted was to be sick at altitude with ANY sort of bug, let alone the stress of wondering if any symptom was severe altitude sickness.

I am happy to report that the toilet situation was amazing. Here is a run-through, so to speak, of our toileting experience.

This is the bathroom at our first tea lodge. We gave it a five-star as it had these qualities: “western” toilet, shower head AND sink. The amazing thing is that these were all in our room!! The miracle of this would be realized at lodges further up the trail.

“Western” toilets were plentiful on the lower end of the trek. The flushing mechanisms even worked.

Here is where we began making the transition. No toilet seat or ability to flush as we’re used to. To flush one had to fill the bucket and pour it in.

This little stone building outside a tea lodge gave you a choice. The first door was a shower. The second door was an “eastern” toilet or as we called a squatty potty. The third door was the “western” toilet as seen below.

At some point on the trail, you could use the pay toilet and pay for the comfort of sitting or the free toilet and squat for free.

And then there were the fake hybrids. You can see the tank that we think was just there for show, the bucket for paper waste and the cup to wash down your business.

We supplied our own paper which was a good thing because there was none provided. We squatted over our first “eastern” toilets in the same manner we would over a cat hole in the woods.

Some were cleaner than others and some were a bit on space.

The biggest trouble we found with these lavatories was the water surrounding it. We told ourselves it was splashed from the barrel of water in rinsing down the business but regardless of where it came from it still froze. Trying to squat over a hole while on the ice at the higher elevations was a little sketchy.

At the impeccably clean airport in China, in the women’s restroom,  there were equal numbers of stalls for both kinds of commodes. What I found curious was that the squatty potties were full! Aaaah, the things we take for granted.