Booking terms

These are the terms on which Darjeeling Trips arranges journeys in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal. They apply to every journey we plan, and they are written to be read rather than survived.

Your quote carries the parts that only your own dates can carry: the houses on your route, the cancellation terms each of those houses sets, the permits your route needs, and the date each rate was checked. Read the two together. Where your quote names a term for your own dates, such as a particular house's cancellation policy, that is the term that applies to you.

Two other pages sit beside this one and do not change it. Payments and prices covers the money and the dates it moves on. Cancellations and refunds covers what happens when a journey does not run.

Changes before confirmation are free. After confirmation, changes that alter what suppliers charge us are passed on at cost, which means what the supplier charges and nothing added by us.

Most changes cost nothing at all: a later start on a driving day, one walk swapped for another, a table booked for one more person. Some cost money, because a house or a transport company reprices. We tell you the figure before we make the change, not after.

A change that drops a night, a room or a whole leg is a cancellation of that part, and the house's own terms apply to it. Cancellations and refunds explains how that works.

Hill travel is not always obedient. The Rangpo road closes after heavy rain. Fog keeps the morning flights on the ground at Bagdogra in December. A permit office declines a route on the morning it should have been issued.

When that happens for reasons beyond anyone's control, we rearrange the journey at no fee of our own and pass on only the difference in supplier costs, if any. In practice it usually means different nights in a valley that is open rather than a journey that stops.

What we cannot do is open a closed road or fly a grounded aircraft. If a journey cannot run at all, Cancellations and refunds sets out what happens to the money.

We ask every guest to hold travel insurance that covers cancellation, medical care and evacuation in the mountains. It is a condition of travelling with us, not a suggestion, and if a house's cancellation charge ever falls on you it is your policy that stands between that charge and your own pocket.

Buy it when your journey is confirmed rather than the week you fly. Travel insurance and safety says what to read in a policy and which altitude to tell your insurer.

These terms are written in English, and English is the language we correspond, quote and confirm in.

Journeys are arranged from West Bengal, India, where we work. The arrangements themselves sit in India, Bhutan and Nepal, each under its own rules and its own licensing, which is why a permit office or a national park can decide something that neither you nor we can overrule.

If something is wrong, write to [email protected] or telephone +91 86178 24110 before anything else. A designer replies within 24 hours, and Complaints sets out what happens after that.