Hot Springs Map: 15 Maps of Wild Pools, Onsen and Ruined Baths

People who map hot springs grade them. Two German-speaking travellers sorted 216 springs of the American West into five layers of stars, a Japanese bather scored 43 onsen for how slippery the water feels, and a New Zealand list rates backcountry pools out of 10. Just as often the maps record change: wild springs in Taiwan buried under gravel or guarded by police fines, an Icelandic pool whose landowner has thought about bulldozing it, a whole row of abandoned hotels in a Japanese onsen town.

1. Western US Hot Springs Map: 216 Springs Rated in Stars

   Austin Hot Springs in Oregon gets one star and a short verdict: lots of rubbish, did not bathe. Every one of these 216 springs, from Baja California Sur and Michoacán to the Canadian Rockies, has the same German card: GPS, state, natural, captured or commercial, temperature in Fahrenheit, 2WD or 4WD, and the hike in kilometres and metres of climb. The layers sort them by stars, 32 with five down to 35 with one. Five stars go to Eagle Creek in Arizona, a spring in a cave with small stalactites and cave popcorn on the ceiling, and to Hannah Hot Spring at the end of a 24.2 km hike through the Blue River canyon. At the bottom lie White Licks, two concrete basins trampled by cows, the murky tub of the residents of Slab City, and Harbin and Wilbur, “too expensive for us” in 2012.

   

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2. Japan Onsen Map: One Bather's 137 Honest Verdicts

   Ginzan Onsen is “the origin of my onsen”: relatives lived there, so the author bathed in its shared baths from early childhood. The 137 springs that follow get a few blunt lines each. Kusatsu has been visited dozens of times and never gets old; Takamagahara Sansō, “rumoured to be the hardest onsen in Japan to reach”, needs two nights or three for the round trip and is worth it. Arima’s Kin no Yu is “the worst, full of chlorine and people”, Kakeyu was “too clean”. Some finds are odd: at a concrete company in Kumamoto you drop 100 yen into a slot and bathe in water that is “absolutely not to be missed”, the Shin-onsen in Hitoyoshi is the most ramshackle building the author has ever seen, and from the rock bath at Kurone on Izu you can “see America”.

   

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3. Iceland Hot Springs Map: 49 Pools by How Hard to Reach

   Hrunalaug, the note warns, has had so many careless visitors that its landowner has considered bulldozing it. This map was written for people driving campervans, and it sorts Iceland’s pools by whether they can get there: 36 easy, 7 on the highland F-roads and 6 “not accessible”, where the advice for Hveragil is “Trying this on a camper is… well, beyond stupid”. The notes are frank. Seljavallalaug, built in 1923, opens with “We hope you like algae”; a geothermal pond near Húsavík holds “the northern most goldfish population in the world”; and of Gjörvidalslaug the writers admit “We can’t find it and a precise location isn’t to be found online. We’ve never been there.”

   

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4. Taiwan Wild Hot Springs Map: Buried, Banned and Boiling

   In 2023 the river spring at Jinlun in Taitung “erupted” into a pool about ten metres across, every part of it above 50 degrees. Each of Taiwan’s wild river springs on this map carries its altitude, its other names, whether entry is banned and dated reports from bathers, and the word for buried, 埋, returns again and again: Nan’ao lies under a gravel beach, Tiangou has been filled in down to a foot bath. At Lelegu the note is just that the police write tickets. At Yunhai someone dug a pool “hot enough to cook flesh” in November 2022, and at Wenshan all the ropes down the cliff have been removed, so bring 50 metres of your own. A second layer holds the routes, parking spots for high-clearance cars and GPS tracks with times.

   

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5. Phlegraean Fields Baths Map: 41 Ancient Springs Paced Out

   “Boiling water springs up among the waves of the sea”, begins the old description of the Bagno del Cantarello near Pozzuoli, and it heals old wounds and new, clears the eyes and helps the arthritic. This Italian map places 41 ancient baths and springs between Pozzuoli, Lake Avernus and Baia the way the old guides did, in paces: the Bagno Rainerio lies 30 paces from the Bagno dell’Arco, the Bagno di Colma 40 from the Bath of the Sun and Moon. The Stufe di San Germano are named after a bishop of Capua who bathed there, the Bagno della Santa Croce after a cross that appeared on Lake Avernus, and the Bagno di San Giorgio lies buried under the new road. A second layer adds 14 later spa establishments.

   

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6. Onsen Map: 43 Japanese Springs Rated for Slipperiness

   Shirakaba Onsen in Hokkaido gets five stars out of five for nurunuru, the slippery feel of alkaline water, after visits in 2001, 2002 and 2007: pH 9.3, 46.2 °C, no chlorine. It earns five more for having spring water even at the washing taps, and two for being “sometimes a bit too hot”. A second scale counts fizz, and Nirasaki Asahi Onsen gets the full five. Most of the 43 entries copy the water analysis, so the map doubles as a pH chart, up to 11.5 at Hakuba. Moruden no Yu at Appi is said to be the only onsen in Japan rising from a layer of mordenite, Shōtokuji Onsen also raises eels, “delicious”, and Dōgo Onsen Honkan, among the most famous baths in the country, gets a single star.

   

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7. New Zealand Hot Springs Map: Backcountry Pools Out of 10

   Kokatahi Hot Pool scores 3 out of 10: 1.5 by 1 metres, warm at best, and the reviewer did not get in, though a tramper wrote in the hut book in January 2011 that they had enjoyed it. The hot springs layer of this map rates mostly remote springs of the South Island’s West Coast and Canterbury, each linked to its review. Cow Stream, five rock and cement pools reached by a 12 km hike, bike or horse ride, scores 8.5; at Taipo, 7.3, a small, very hot pool can be dug out of the sand when the river is low, after a 7 to 8 hour tramp. Top Hope needs “a shovel and a strong back”, and Haupiri is reached through the land of the Gloriavale Christian Community. Around them lie the map’s other layers, hunting areas and karst landscapes.

   

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8. Abandoned Onsen Hotels Map: The Ruins of Kinugawa

   The Kinugawa Daiichi Hotel and its neighbour Kinugawakan Honten competed by building extension after extension until they could sleep more than 500 guests; now they stand side by side as ruins. This small Japanese map colours the onsen town’s hotels red for ruins, yellow for closed and green for those still open. Genyu Hoshinoya, founded in 1925, closed in 2010 and is now watched by alarm systems, Kinugawakan was known for its glass-walled “kappa bath”, and of Iwaburo Suimeikan only a red bridge is left. Had the demolished west wing of the Kinugawa Kankō Hotel survived, the author writes, these ruins would have no rival anywhere. Takimi Bridge is marked as the place to see them all at once.

   

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9. Thermal Baths Map: 72 Spas from Pamukkale to Siberia

   “2017-05-22, Königliche Kristall-Therme Schwangau: free on your birthday, outdoor pools with a view of the castles, Mövenpick ice cream for one euro.” This Russian diary of thermal baths starts in 2006 at Cleopatra’s Pool in Pamukkale, passes Budapest’s baths in 2014 and 2015 and then numbers its spa weekends in Germany, nine of them, judging saunas as much as water: Aqualand has the hottest sauna at 110 to 115 degrees, Bad Wilsnack “the saltiest pool, almost a Dead Sea”. From late 2020 the visits turn east, to thermal complexes around Tyumen, Kurgan and Chelyabinsk, three of them named Baden-Baden, one with “unfiltered water from a borehole”. A second layer lists 33 places still to go, from Saturnia to Tropical Islands.

   

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10. World Hot Springs Map: 173 Soaks from Chukotka to Lesotho

    The spread is the point of this French map of 173 hot springs in 31 countries: it reaches from the Lorino springs on the Chukotka coast, across the Bering Strait from Alaska, to the Soloane hot springs beside the Letseng diamond mine in Lesotho. Its layers are named for sources chaudes: 43 in Japan, 27 in Italy, 18 in the Maghreb, mostly Algerian hammams such as Hammam Meskhoutine, 13 in the Middle East, among them Iraq’s Khormal mineral spring. The Asia layer finds Bhutan’s Dhur and Koma tshachus and Kheer Ganga in the Himalaya, the Africa layer springs in Uganda, Zambia and Angola. Three layers hold one place each: a hot spring without a bath, the travertine terraces of Badab-e Surt in Iran, and, as heritage, Göbekli Tepe.

    

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11. Lake Baikal Hot Springs Map: Buryatia's Healing Waters

    The Kotelnikovsky spring, on a cape of Baikal’s north-western shore named after the merchant Kotelnikov’s trading post, comes out at 81 °C all year, the hottest on Baikal, and is too rich in fluorine to drink. This Russian map sorts 20 springs and spa resorts of Buryatia by their legal status, from Arshan, of federal significance and visited by about 100,000 people a year, to six of local significance. The notes mix chemistry with history: Kiran was described by Pallas on his travels of 1773 to 1788 and had its first mud clinic in 1825, the Shumak valley at 1,558 metres in the Eastern Sayan gathers more than 100 springs, and Garga, once a well-known resort, can only be reached by fording the river since its bridge was destroyed.

    

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12. Onsen Musume Map: The Anime Girls of Japan's Hot Springs

    Onsen Musume gives each hot spring town a girl of its own, named after it: Arima Rinka and Arima Fuuka are special tourism ambassadors of Arima and official characters of Kobe, Okuhida Isuzu works for the Okuhida springs. This map follows the whole project through 1,171 places: the onsen towns, the inns and shops with life-size panels and merchandise, some photographed in January 2022, the springs that hand out the 御泉印 seal, the nearest stations, and the “holy land” sites of the songs, such as the Kobe pier of Arima Rinka’s single. The details are exact down to the merch, including a badge sold at a brewery in Daigo that shows the local mascot saying no to drunk driving.

    

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13. Canada Hot Springs Map: From the Fjords to the Nahanni

    One pool in Colorado is marked “hot springs pool for alligators only”, at a reptile park. The rest of these 144 hot, warm and cool springs are wilder. Forty lie north of 55 degrees, in northern British Columbia, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, among them Broken Skull and Ekwi; others sit in the coastal fjords, and Hotspring Island in Gwaii Haanas carries its Haida name, Gandll K’in Gwaayaay. The notes keep track of losses: Kinbasket Lake Hot Springs was flooded by the Mica Dam, Choquette is mostly flooded, Nascall is being developed on private land. And at Grayling River the mapmaker is not sure: “not in the hotsprings book… is there a hotspring here?”

    

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14. Italy Thermal Baths Map: Free Pools, Caves and Closed Spas

    Grotta Giusti at Monsummano Terme runs more than 200 metres under the spa, one of the largest natural thermal caves in Europe. This French map of 310 Italian thermal sites sorts them into free baths, paid baths, closed baths, warm fountains above 20 degrees and a layer of thermal caves, among them a cold one, the Grotta del Freddo on Pantelleria. The volcanic island also has free pools of its own: Gadir, the Grotta di Sataria, the Specchio di Venere. The closed list includes the spa of Acireale, shut since 2015, and the notes keep the history: Bagni di Lucca drew Lord Byron, Puccini and Alexandre Dumas, and Acqui Terme’s hot fountain, La Bollente, was built in 1870.

    

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15. Southeast Asia Hot Springs Map: A Soaking Blogger's Trail

    “Thailand’s best” is Pong Duet, says the title of the blog post its pin links to. The 53 springs on this map run through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, and most lead to a post on Soaking in Siam or Soaking in Southeast Asia, written between 2008 and 2012. The post titles are reviews in miniature: Tei Teuk Pous is “Cambodia’s finest”, Binh Chau in Vietnam “faux”, Mae Kasa “zilch”, Sembawang is “soaking in sity” in Singapore, and the Laotian spring of Baw Njai brings “if only life could be so good, beer lao”. Tham Khao Plu is a hot spring in a cave.

    

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