Brit Traveller Spends £150K Finding World’s Number 1 ‘Worst Loo’ for Number Twos

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A Briton who spent more than four decades and nearly £150,000 searching for the world’s worst public toilet has finally found his “perfect hell hole” – a ramshackle tent with walls that double as loo roll.
Travel writer and blogger Graham Askey, known to his friends as “King of the Porcelain”, travelled almost 75,000 miles and visited nearly 100 countries before discovering “Satan’s sh*thouse” in northern Tajikistan.
It is so repulsive that he was sick within a few seconds of seeing its cockroach-infested contents.
At just 5ft high, he says those desperate enough to use it must stoop over sun-dried faeces – before positioning themselves over a “brown mountain” of excrement.
The “fermenting” mound is said to look like an erupting volcano thanks to its pointed shape and “lava-like gloop” running down its sides.
But by far the “most repellent thing of all”, Askey says, is that its fabric walls are used as shared toilet paper.
While some sections have been torn off and discarded on the cubicle floor, the tattered remains closer to the ground have “quite evidently” been used, and reused, by several people.
Aside from the grim germ risks, there is also a danger of disturbing deadly snakes and fearless rats which have all made their homes in the nearby rocks.
According to Askey, the toilet in the Ayni region of Tajikistan, on the western edge of the Pamirs and not far from the Afghanistan border, is so vile that the locals refuse to use it unless “absolutely desperate”.
Askey, a self-confessed “squatter spotter”, visited hundreds of public toilets in six of the world’s seven continents before crowning the Tajikistan outhouse the worst of them all.
He included 36 of the “crappiest crappers” he encountered in his new book ‘Toilets of the Wild Frontier’, which hits the shelves this week.
Other public loos that made his “crap list” include a sink in Bangladesh that was so blocked with faeces that it was full of urine, and a bath containing “litres of number ones and twos” in China. The plug was apparently left in.
A hut on 10ft-high stilts in Indonesia also made the list thanks to its death-defying walkway, as did a wooden chair with an in-built toilet seat in Benin which, perched prominently upon a raised platform in the middle of the village, is said by Askey to be the “least privacy conscious lavatory” he’s ever encountered.
The retired builder developed his peculiar fascination for public lavatories – and in particular their poor construction – on his first overseas holiday to Morocco.
He has since visited 91 countries, travelled approximately 75,000 miles, and spent around £150,000 visiting private and public bathrooms around the world.
He photographed only the outside of the worst loos he visited to spare people the “vomit-inducing” contents, and would spend the “absolute minimum amount of time” inside to stave off nausea.
The pictures he took clocked-up thousands of views on his “Inside Other Places” blog which he penned for the fictitious Toilet & Urinal Restoration & Design Society (‘TURDS’).
His unique posts about far-flung parts of the world became so popular that he decided to collate the top 36 into book form.
Whilst meant as a work of satire, it also aims to highlight the health risk posed by sub-standard sanitation.
Askey, 58, said: “Make no mistake that every ‘entry’ on my list is gross beyond words.
“Some may look OK but believe me – and I know – they’re the most inhospitable places on earth, and to spend a single minute inside any of them would be unthinkable except in the direst of circumstances.
“Each and every one of them would appear to attract members of the public who have yet to master the basic art of ‘aiming’.
“After my many travels, I thought I’d seen it all, what with sh*tters on stilts, sinks seemingly full of wee and bath tubs apparently being used as makeshift bogs.

“But having enjoyed some of the filthiest bathroom facilities to be found anywhere on the planet, the toilet in Tajikistan has to be the worst in the world – it is the perfect hell hole.
“With no toilet paper available, the builders have conveniently built it with a fabric covering to offer wiping functionality – and it looks like the locals have made full use of it!”
Askey, who lives in Brighton, added: “While readers will undoubtedly find these woeful public toilets hilarious, it must be understood that they represent a significant and largely unnecessary health risk, which can be reduced substantially by
supporting charities like ActionAid and World Toilet Day.”