Amazing new pictures show the world's ultimate loo with a view, a precarious privy perched on a Russian cliff edge.
At an altitude of 8,530 feet in the Altai Mountains, this commode in the cold is the only toilet for Siberia's highest - and bleakest - weather station.
For the four meteorologists who staff this lonely outpost, getting caught short in the night can mean a walk in temperatures minus 50C to relieve themselves.
Previously voted the most extreme loo in the world, photographer Natalia Nesterenko, who recently visited the Kara-Tyurek meteorological station, said: 'The toilet is outdoors and when you enter it, you lose your breath because it is set on the edge of the cliff.'
'It takes years for users to sit comfortably on this perilous potty,' reported The Siberian Times.
Yet the mountaintop weather station - originally set up by Stalin in 1939 - performs vital functions in reporting on meteorological conditions used to assist pilots flying across the Siberian land mass between Europe and the Far East.
The location is so remote and inaccessible that the only way of delivering supplies is by helicopter.
Ten flights are made each autumn to replenish food and other essentials, and even firewood has to be flown in to this barren spot.
'The station is elevated, there is a steep cliff on one side of the station, and a precipitous descent on the other,' said Natalia. 'Life at the station is nearly totally isolated from people.'
To get water to drink and wash with, the scientists in winter collect snow in barrels and take it indoors to melt.
In summer, they collect rainwater that pours off the station's roof. In summer, an occasional intrepid hiker will visit, but the nearest village of any size is 60 miles away, and the regional capital Gorno-Altaisk is some 500 miles distant.
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