Cleanest toilets in India

I forgot to mention that the Sathyam cinema in Chennai had wonderfully nice loos. Louise has been to India 14 times and she reckons they are the cleanest she's ever seen in this country.

Toileting in India is something else. Men seem to urinate where ever they please, so that in many areas the stench is horrific. Women are more often forced to pay a couple of rupees to use a public facility that although much used would be lucky to see a weekly clean.

A particular bugbear for me (and Louise too) is that the loos are always wet. This is because Indians wash instead of using paper, and in the process they seem to get water everywhere.

Visiting a public toilet means:
• take a deep breath, it might be bad outside but you probably want to cover your nose inside.
• enter the toilet facilities.
• if there is a queue, maintain position - an Indian woman will barge right in front of you if you don't be serious about this. She will even push.
• secure your bag on you (there is never a hook, and if there was it'd be attached to a filthy wall),
• enter cubicle, discover it has no latch to hold it closed.
• roll up the trousers legs (otherwise they will be about to touch the floor and wick up water while you squat (it's harder with bags attached but whether it's a western loo or an eastern hole in the floor, you probably don't wanna touch it)
• use foot to hold door closed while you pull trousers down... Careful not to lower them too close to the wet dirty floor
• swap foot holding door to hand to hold door and lower yourself into a squat
• be Careful!
• fumble for loo paper (none is supplied - they use water - and if it was it'd be wet like everything else.)
• switch hands for foot again while you pull up trousers.
• Once you're done and the mosquitoes have bitten your exposed ankles and bum you find that you have to touch something filthy (probably a bucket) to flush the toilet.
•You leave, walk down the street and then realise that your trousers are still rolled up! (They don't wear shorts here and nor should any respectful tourist, so no to rolled up trousers too).

On top of this, the Indian loo attendant will often try to charge me more due to my being a tourist, which wouldn't be so bad if they gave me some toilet paper or something for it, but they don't.

It's hard to keep enough fluids in the system when you know that you might be faced with all this. I haven't been brave enough to check out the loos on the trains - I could smell them on the way past, it was enough.

The photo shows men's toilets at a bus stop on the 5 hour bus ride from Vellore to Bangalore. I can only tell what can be seen (I could hardly check it out), walls to the average Indians chest, no roof. It stunk, but so did the field where the other men were going.