Should Everest's South Base Camp get public toilets? (photo courtesy: tourochina.co.uk)

We’ve all been there: the stomach starts gurgling as last night’s curry reminds you it has yet to complete its epic voyage through you.
But you are on a remote expedition of your own, and not exactly best placed to head for the nearest toilet block, whistling the Marseillaise, with copy of the Racing Post tucked under your arm.
You frantically look for signs to the public conveniences and then remember you are more than 29,000 feet above sea level, on the roof of the earth, and more likely to bump into a snow leopard than a palatial toilet block with pristine marble floors and gold taps.
This is the dilemma faced by the thousands of trekkers who brave the elements to head to Everest every year, minds preoccupied more with the challenge of ascending the world’s tallest mountain than what the toilet paper will be like when they get there.
There is only one answer on such occasions. Well, two: you can always bring a cork with you, I suppose.
For the rest of us, there is no option, you have to go where you are. Polite trekkers bring a contingency with them, the euphemistically-named “expedition can”, which sounds more like a sports drink than a repository for your waste.
But not all trekkers are polite, and this is becoming a real problem for the groups who are trying to keep Everest nice for the rest of us.
A partial solution may be in the offing, however.  
Environmental group Eco Himal has suggested that the Nepal government consider installing portable toilets at Everest’s South Base Camp.
Expeditions would do a better job of keeping the place clean if they and their porters had somewhere civilised to go when nature called, Eco Himal says.
My report for AFP can be read on the Daily Telegraph’s website, here.
Everest is littered with the detritus of past expeditions, including human waste and mountaineers’ corpses, which can take decades to decompose because of the extreme cold.
There is no official figure on how much trash has been left on the mountain, but the debris of 50 years of climbing has given Everest the name of the world’s highest dumpster.
The privately-funded Eco Everest Expedition, a Nepal-based coalition of environmentalists campaigning to keep the mountain clean, has collected more than 13 tonnes of garbage, 400 kilos of human waste and four bodies since 2008.
Nepal’s Sherpa people, who are Buddhists and believed to be of Tibetan origin, make up most of the population in the Everest region and have long revered the world’s highest peak as sacred.
I spoke to Wangchhu Sherpa, of the Everest Sumiteers Association in Kathmandu today. He believes at least 10 tonnes of rubbish remain on the mountain and he feels a government blacklist for tour groups who cannot account for all their belongings when they return from Everest – including containers of human waste – might be a better idea than a few toilets at base camp.
But are we realistic to expect these rules to enforced?
With the financial crisis deepening around the world, we habitually – and somewhat myopically – line up the environment as the first casualty of our cost-cutting.
In one of the poorest countries on earth, it seems unlikely that successive governments are going to want to pay for hundreds of inspectors to ensure people are looking after Everest.
The simple solution, as with so many environmental issues, is that people grow up and realise that it is incumbent on them, not governments, police or the courts, to ensure that our planet is looked after.