The trek to Valley of Flowers and nearby areas was good. We had gone there on 17th July 2022.

1. I have attached a photo of our itinerary Blue Poppy provided us here for your reference. There are a total of 4 treks, out of which 1 is optional (where you get to explore the deeper parts of the Valley of Flowers). In all the treks, you have the option of avoiding walking, by using horses or some other means. It is important to note that the terrain has a steep slope in most parts, and the oxygen levels are low. This makes the trek very hard to complete with ease.

2. About the stays, all hotels they provided were good enough having basic facilities. In hotel Priya, you need to wait for some time to get warm water for bathing; this is understandable given the fact that it is a remote place like Ghangria. Still, I liked the staff working here and in other hotels as well. They were good in nature and helpful. Same was the case with the trek-guide Blue Poppy had allotted our group.

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This was some basic information about the good part of our tour. But, in my opinion, this is something that is expected from a well-known tour company. That means, the negative things are the ones I like to point out and should be a deciding factor while choosing your preferred tour company.

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3. Moving to the bad part, I didn’t like way the owner made us get back the already paid amount as a refund into our bank account so that we could transfer it the second time to another account. This purpose was to save some tax charges to they were supposed to pay to the government.
The payment method used by Blue Poppy is such that they ask us to transfer the total charges in two parts, first one initially to a bank account and the next one around a month before our trip to a second bank account.
As you can see in the other picture that I have attached, they had provided us details for one of their accounts. We trasferred both instalments at the proper times to them in the same bank account. Then, they asked for our bank details and refunded back the second instalment to us and asked us to transfer the same amount to another bank account. All this for just saving some 3-4k GST! It was their mistake they didn’t give us correct bank details at the right time, and now they were acting as if we had done something wrong. I personally think that it is little risky to enter bank account details every time before sending funds, since even if 1 digit goes wrong, the amount will end up in someone else’s account. So, I was not wanting to transfer back such a big amount again. But, the owner was so adamant that he FORCED us to get back the second instalment and transfer it again. He said that your trek won’t start if you don’t agree, otherwise pay us 3-4k extra to us. This is something I disliked the most, I felt like we are there to help them save their GST.

4. Besides, the rooms in the Blue Poppy Hotel in Auli were not ventilated properly and I was not even able to breathe properly here. Because of lack of air and oxygen inside, I was not able to sleep as desired. I will not recommend staying here.

5. Lastly, it appears that they ask us to write reviews here, ONLY if they are good. Because, in my case they asked me for my review on Whatsapp and once they saw that I have some issues, they never gave me the link to post my feedback. This means, some people who have bad experiences can’t make it to tripadvisor.com i.e. this thread here only has positive reviews, and cannot be trusted wholly.

Summary: It was a good experience, since the arrangements for the trek were done properly. There was issue with the hotel in Auli, because the rooms were not properly designed taking vetilation into picture. The owner was too adamant when it came to payment of funds, asking us to accept refund for the already paid fees and making us transfer money again to another account to save taxes.