Cancellations and refunds

There is no single cancellation percentage on this page, and that is deliberate. Cancellation charges follow each property's own policy, and a tea estate in high October and a town hotel in low July do not set the same terms.

So we write each house's terms into your quote, under that house, before you pay, and your written confirmation repeats them. Those are the figures that would apply to you, and the only ones worth reading.

One charge is ours. The planning fee inside your price is not refundable once a journey is confirmed, because by then the design work has been done. Everything else belongs to a supplier and follows that supplier's own terms.

Write to [email protected] with the names and the dates. You do not have to explain why.

We tell each house, each transport company and, where one has been filed, the permit office, on the same working day. Each applies its own terms as at that date, and we add nothing of our own to what they charge.

Then you get the arithmetic in writing: each supplier's charge on its own line, the planning fee, and the amount going back to you. If a supplier later waives or reduces a charge, that difference goes back to you as well.

It is rare, and we would rather describe it than pretend it cannot happen. A house closes. A supplier we depend on fails.

We tell you as soon as we know, and before you fly if there is any way to reach you in time. Then you choose: other dates for the same journey, or your money back. What comes back is everything we have received that a supplier's own terms have not already claimed, and we charge nothing of our own for a cancellation that is ours.

Air tickets and insurance you bought yourself sit outside our arrangements, so they are not ours to return. That is one reason we ask every guest to be insured before a balance is paid.

This is the common case, and it is usually not a cancellation at all.

The North Sikkim road shuts after a night of rain, so the nights move to a valley that is open. A landslide closes the Teesta road on the morning you were to drive to Kalimpong, so the route is turned around and driven later in the week. A permit is declined on the day it should have been issued, so that day becomes a different day.

We rearrange at no fee of our own, and only the difference in what suppliers charge is passed on, if there is one. Nobody is charged a cancellation fee for weather.

If a journey cannot run at all for a reason of this kind, it is not treated as your cancellation, and the row in the table above applies instead.

Back the way it came. A bank transfer goes to the account it was sent from and a card payment is refunded to the same card. We do not send a refund to a different account, card or person, whoever asks, because that is how money goes missing.

We ask you to confirm the account in writing first, then tell you the date the refund left here and the reference it left under. How long it takes after that belongs to your bank and, on a card, to the card network, so we do not publish a number of days we cannot control.