Western Ghats and Sri Lanka bird watching Holidays

Environment

This is a birding trip so we want to take you as close the wildlife without actually impacting the birds. The ultimate guideline is to minimise the stress on the birds. Our guides are trained to keep an appropriate distance from all birds they observe. We will stay on marked trails as much as possible. We do not use bird calls or feed traps to flush out birds.

We will also not leave any waste on our trips. Our guides occasionally even cleanup sites they visit. We don’t use plastic water bottles. We will have a 20L can that you can refill your water bottles from.

Even though it seems like it is always raining in Sri Lanka, water scarcity is a growing problem. 2017 was one of the driest years to date. With this in mind we do our best to minimise our water consumption. Our drivers are instructed to wash the vehicles as little as possible. Don’t worry our vehicles will still be clean. We also carry this message of water conservation to the hotels we use.

The birding camp at Thattekkad in Kerala is renowned for the low impact it has on the environment as far as its construction and operations are concerned. The hotel recycles the waste into compost and is used to grow vegetables. The hotel in Kitulgala in Sri Lanka uses the adjoining river for a major part of its power generation.

When it comes to transportation, we try and use hybrid vehicles as far as possible. Also we only use the right sized vehicle for you.

Community

Our trips our designed, planned and operated by us, the locals. We operate in areas where our guides grew up both in the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka. This guarantees them a decent living from tourism. We eat in restaurants we enjoy and use the services of friends and family. The guides on our trips started as helpers, drivers and assistants. After years of self learning they are now passionate birders themselves and most of them figure in independent trip reports.

Sri Lanka is on the brink of suffering from over tourism. In order to fight this we try and spread out tourist both in terms of timing as well as destinations. We promote off the main tourist areas. The accommodation we use in Thattekkad and Munnar in the Western Ghats and Kitulgala and Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka are situated away from the tourist center, thus bringing employment to more areas as well as reducing the over tourism impact.

In Sri Lanka, we try and support local charities when we can. We organise an annual cycling event that generates funds for children suffering from Cerebral Palsy. We also support schools near Munnar in the mountains with part of the earnings being channeled there for books, toys and computers.

We do not promote commission based tourism, instead we promote shops run by local cooperatives. Look out for the “Hela Bojun” restaurants, run by the local women’s cooperatives in Sri Lanka and the Shrshti collective near Munnar in Kerala where items made by disadvantaged children are sold.