Best tour companies for birds & restricted diets (1 Viewer)

Up until this point, my husband and I have organized our own birding trips, hiring private guides as need be. However, we are thinking about trying a standard tour for the first time. Of course, we want to see as many great birds as possible. However, I have some pretty serious diet restrictions and if I wind up seriously ill during the trip due to food screw ups, I probably won’t really care how many great birds I’ve seen.

So, which bird tour companies are both really serious about the birds & about their clients overall comfort/health/dietary requirements?

Ideas?

melisande said:

Up until this point, my husband and I have organized our own birding trips, hiring private guides as need be. However, we are thinking about trying a standard tour for the first time. Of course, we want to see as many great birds as possible. However, I have some pretty serious diet restrictions and if I wind up seriously ill during the trip due to food screw ups, I probably won’t really care how many great birds I’ve seen.

So, which bird tour companies are both really serious about the birds & about their clients overall comfort/health/dietary requirements?

Ideas?

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Regardles of the hefty price tag attached to most tours, outside of the usual vegetarion option, I'd be very surprised if you'd get any company to accept responsibility and with it, liability, for any serious allergies you may have in relation to food?

The best thing would be either a tour with own cook, or a tour that only goes to a very limited amount of locations (let's say 2-3) so the accomodation can be informed beforehand and food can be made as you wish.

I wouldn't do a tour where you stay one night at each location.

The best would be to send an email to some of your preferred tour companies, and see what they can do for you.

temmie said:

The best thing would be either a tour with own cook, or a tour that only goes to a very limited amount of locations (let's say 2-3) so the accomodation can be informed beforehand and food can be made as you wish.

I wouldn't do a tour where you stay one night at each location.

The best would be to send an email to some of your preferred tour companies, and see what they can do for you.

Click to expand...

If your reaction to certain foods is potentailly so bad, I'd imagine that you'd be asked to sign a disclaimer, removing any liability against the tour company for any 'accidents'?

I have a friend who simply takes food with him in case his food would not be available for a couple of days. Once he ended up bringing a heap of tuna cans from Thailand back to Europe.

Otherwise it depends on the location and your dietary restriction, not a company. Tour companies normally dine in good quality restaurants. I doubt you wouldn't be able to get a meal in New Dehli or Japan. But in, say, remote parts of North-east India or New Guinea you are limited to what is available. I think any tour company would quite easily answer your question about the particular tour if you have a good idea what you can and cannot eat.

If you rent apartment with kitchen or house, you are undependend and can cook meals on your own health plan.
Most easy for you is countries with English as native speaker.
If other language write down the most important phrases before.
In case of problems is easier to get help.
But you have to make sure this area have good medical support.

jurek said:

But in, say, remote parts of North-east India ...you are limited to what is available.

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Here you mention a tour where actually, everything is cooked by a tour-chartered cook, so everything can be made as you wish. Sometimes, the expedition travels are actually easier because everything is tailor-made. I had excellent dinners in e.g. Sichuan in Wawu Shan, where we just stepped in the kitchen without speaking any Chinese, and gestured with a knife-chopping movement what they had to make and how. They always said something like 'aaaah, I understand', and they always came at our table with the most fabulous food made from the ingredients we pointed out. I don't see that happening in every place in the world, but in places with many ingredients on offer and a long tradition in excellent cooking, it is possible.

If you have dietary restrictions and are dependent on the restaurant the Tour will use, they sometimes have to search for alternative places to eat and this could be inflexible / time consuming for the tour company.

jurek said:

I have a friend who simply takes food with him in case his food would not be available for a couple of days. Once he ended up bringing a heap of tuna cans from Thailand back to Europe.

Otherwise it depends on the location and your dietary restriction, not a company. Tour companies normally dine in good quality restaurants. I doubt you wouldn't be able to get a meal in New Dehli or Japan. But in, say, remote parts of North-east India or New Guinea you are limited to what is available. I think any tour company would quite easily answer your question about the particular tour if you have a good idea what you can and cannot eat.

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LOL — that is exactly what I do, schlep around cans of tuna! That and Turkey Jerky.

I don’t have allergies, I have chronic pancreatitis. I have zero symptoms if I stick to an extremely low fat diet (and I mean really low, like 5% fat). My symptoms get progressively worse as more fat is added. I will definitely feel sick for days after a moderately fatty meal and if I eat hamburgers and fries (or something similarly fatty) I will probably wind up in the ER, violently ill.

I can eat anything that isn’t fatty. And a little screw-up from time to time would probably be Ok.

The problem I tend to have is that I do not have any special “fat vision” and if I ask for a nonfat meal, I sometimes have no way of knowing if it actual is nonfat until I try it and see. Then I usually do not get symptoms right away, they come on about 2 hours after eating. Example, if I ask for nonfat milk and I am given a glass of milk, how do I know if is nonfat instead of, say, 2% or whole milk. They look exactly the same. Or how do I know that really, we made these mashed potatoes with no added fat? Hard to tell until I try and see.

I suppose I could just play it safe and stick to my turkey jerky and cans of chunk light tuna in water.

melisande said:

So, which bird tour companies are both really serious about the birds & about their clients overall comfort/health/dietary requirements?

Click to expand...

Check the registration form. All the major tour companies I've dealt with have a space on the registration form for you to list any special dietary requirements. If there isn't such a space that's probably a good clue that they aren't focused on such matters. I've been on several tours where the guide would work with the restaurant or lodge staff to request special meals for specific participants. I don't really think there would be any problem with the tour company, but getting every eatery you visit to comply with your requirements, especially in developing countries, may be a challenge over which the guide has minimal control. So I suggest you contact the tour provider beforehand to see what information they can provide about the specific tours you are interested in.

In your place I would pick a nice locality and check local cuisine. If it includes lots of vegetables, fruit, seafood and chicken, contact the tour operator.

Ask what meals are there, and whether the tour includes lots of remote areas. There it might be little choice of meals in a local eatery and you might get e.g. only dishes cooked in hot oil.

Interestingly, I was never served a hamburger or milk on any birding trip.

(Edit: correction. In Tibet I was).