Incredible Birding Camp — Attraction in Uttarakhand

I went to many wildlife tours and birding tours in different countries and in India. This is probably the only tour where I did not get value for money.

First good things...

Kushboo the owner arranged a nice place to stay when we did not like her place. Food and stay were good at the new place. I did not stay at Incredible birding lodge.

Our birding guide did put good effort to show birds the first two days in spite of rain playing a spoil sport.

Sattal offers beautiful views and roads are reasonably well maintained. Good for family vacation.

Now not so good things.

Incredible birding company cannot be compared to other good photography tour companies. If you are a serious wildlife and bird photographer, don't waste your money. Go with Toehold, Outback or Darter.

Incredible Birding rooms are like godown. They had strong smell..as if the rooms were unused for many months or paint smell. I was not looking for luxury for 4K but looking for clean rooms. I could not stay there for a minute and requested to shift to other hotel that Kushboo kindly arranged. But I had to pay for cancelation fee.

Incredible Birding makes incredible money on Taxi. They charged 4000 per day when they hardly travel 20 KM per day. Everything is within 20KM. Don't take their Taxi service.

Our tour guide is knowledgeable but lacks skill to make it interesting for tourists. Normally we learn so much from guides about birds and the place. He is mostly silent, on mobile or only talks to driver. My daughter got bored as she was comparing this tour with other tours she experienced.

Our tour guide made me walk down the hill stating it will be 10 min rasta to Studio from Hide which turned out to be 45 min walk downhill on solid rocky and slippery path. This is after I told him that I recently got knee hole surgery and recovering. I agree he helped me and held my camera bag in extreme slopes. But this trek put lot of stress on my knee. I had to cut short the next day birding tour.

Even though I informed 4 days in advance that I want to cut short the trip, I was charged for Taxi and Guide for the full tour. Looks like Kushboo is interested to make money in the short-term but not interesred to build goodwill or brand. I see total lack of customer empathy from this company.

I was promised Ertiga or Innova pickup from Delhi but got a local Uber Sedan. We suffered sitting for 7 hours in a small sedan. No apologies or discount given for the inconvenience.

Sattal is beautiful but I am not sure if this is right place for birding. There is only the studio which is good. Hides were worse than my backyard in Bangalore. Many times we had to shoot birds from road side with speeding cars and honking trucks. I felt it was not safe. My daughter refused to shoot from roadside and sat in the car.

Overall it was bad experience and not much value for the money and effort spent going all the way from Bangalore. I am not talking about spotting the birds which I agree cannot be controlled by this firm. But they can definitely work on improving customer experience and rethink about their pricing strategy for Taxi. They should train their guides on how to conduct professional tours and drivers on basic hygiene.

I edited out name of our guide as I don't want to...

I've been to this property 3 times and everything was fine until i visited the third time. I was staying here with my partner and at 3 am I sense that someone(a guy in beard and sweatpants) is trying to peep inside my cottage from the door. I start shouting and hear someone running upwards and to the back. I tried calling the owner and the staff but no one answered. I didn't leave the cottage as i was scared for our safety. The owner reached out to me at 7 in the morning and i couldn't sleep the entire night. I was assured that action will be taken. This entire incident left me and my partner traumatized. The property is well maintained and i had already been here twice before because of the calm and serene environment but there is negligence on part of the staff and the owners. There should be CCTV cameras installed everywhere. I was given a refund and assured that action will be taken. I hope they do take the necessary measures to ensure safety.

REPLY:These are the past two bookings i did in this camp stay(pictures enclosed). Their staff (tej) told us to directly book the stay next time and we did the same as it was not available in the app. And he told us to directly come. How would we know that there is so much discrepancy between the owners and the staff. And the staff is cheating the owners.How are you not aware of the fact that rooms are being alloted by the staff in your property but they do not even care to inform you. Who's fault is that? A word of advice for the owner rather than viciously replying to every review please focus on your management and INSTALL CCTV.

I don't know how do they hire them. It's the owners responsibility. When we reached the stay, their staff ( tej's brother) took pictures of our ID's and told us he will do the entry on the register. And for the payment he told us to pay later as the QR code of the owner was not available at that time. We trusted him as we had already been here twice before. I guess it was our mistake to trust the shady property.I would also like to mention that the guy(tejs brother)who took us to the room was no where to be found the next day. At night the incidence happened, which is discussed above. To reply to what you said, we were both alone and no one came with us and you are well aware of that but i do understand it might be hard to accept on a public platform and lying is much more convinient i guess :)Things could have went south that night. Still we gave a constructive review and meant no harm to you. It was to educate the travellers about the shortcomings your property had. But instead of taking the criticism positively you alleged us of everything you possibly could have, which shows about your character. Your property is doomed. All the best to you and your staff. Your co owners are much more sensible than you. I advice the travellers to talk directly to them. (Screenshots of the phone call are enclosed along with the text that we did them...

Incredible? Not really. I'm not sure if it's due to incompetence or apathy or a bit of both. Management is not client focused and incapable of organization and communicating even the most basic information. When you have to get all your info from other guests, something is clearly amiss. Events that did happen, happened in the most haphazard fashion possible. The on-site bird hide / photo gallary is a piece of astro turf around a water vessel next to the foot path coming down. Crudely fashioned and unnatural looking, no real effort was made. My room was clean and comfortable but the cold water in the basin was a mere trickle. I have to say the food was excellent, thank you chef, 5 stars for you! Guiding delivered some good results but once again communication was completely lacking and there's no fun in walking around with someone that's not personable. My biggest niggle is the dishonesty about prices. I got an inflated price list when I emailed them, only to find another lower price list on WhatsApp. When I enquired about a taxi to the airport, I got quoted 1000 rupee above the highest I could obtain myself. Going to their "special" birdhide 15 km away for an extortionate price in travel fees is crazy when you can walk a few hundred meters to a birdhide that charges an acceptable entrance fee and has everything. I can see this venture being run into the ground by a lack of basic customer relation skills with no actual interest in clients that come to stay. Overall I loved the Sattal area, but was extremely disappointed with my hosts. Update: I think the malicious reply to my review must be some kind of generic nonsense ramble lol, it only serves to reinforce my opinion. Looks like it's easier to launch into a made-up personal attack than addressing the...