What we know about you, and what we do with it.

1. Who we are

IndiCulture arranges small-group cultural experiences in and around Jaipur, unhurried multi-day journeys across Rajasthan, and stays with host families. This policy covers this website and every enquiry, booking and conversation that comes through it.

We decide what personal information is collected and why, which makes us the data controller under UK and EU data protection law, and the data fiduciary under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

You can reach us about anything in this policy by email, and we answer these ourselves rather than routing them to a service desk.

2. What we collect

What you tell us when you enquire or book:

• Your name, and an email address or phone number so we can reply.
• When you are travelling, how long for, and who is coming with you.
• Dietary requirements, allergies, mobility needs, and any health information you choose to share so a host can look after you properly.
• Anything else you put in a message to us. People often mention what they are hoping for, and we keep that alongside the enquiry.

If you go on to book:

• A billing name and, where a payment provider requires it, a billing address.
• A payment reference and the amount, so we can match a payment to a booking.

We never see or store full card numbers. Those go directly to the payment provider, who is regulated to handle them.

Collected automatically when you visit the site:

• Your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you looked at, where you arrived from, and the date and time — recorded in our hosting provider's server logs.

From other people: where a host, a partner, or somebody booking on your behalf passes on the details needed to run your trip.

3. Cookies and what is stored on your device

This site does not need cookies in order to work, and sets none of its own for that purpose.

It stores a single entry in your browser's session storage, under the name indiculture:scroll, which remembers where you had scrolled to. It exists so the back button returns you to the part of the page you left rather than the top of it. It never leaves your device, it is never sent to us, and your browser discards it when you close the tab.

Anything beyond that — measurement and advertising — is described in the next section and is only ever set with your agreement.

4. Advertising and measurement

We advertise on Meta — that is Facebook and Instagram — and on Google, including Google Search and YouTube. Advertising is how a business nobody has heard of gets found at all.

Where you agree to it, those platforms place cookies or similar identifiers in your browser through tags on this site. They let us do two things: see which adverts actually led to an enquiry, and show our adverts again to people who have looked at the site, or to people who resemble them.

What is sent to them is the fact that a page was viewed or an enquiry was started, together with the identifiers the platform itself sets. Your dietary requirements, allergies and health information are never sent to an advertising platform. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it so that somebody else can market to you.

You are in control of this:

• You can decline measurement and advertising cookies when you are asked, and change your mind later. Declining does not affect anything you can do or book on this site.
• Meta lets you see and change what it uses to target adverts at you in the Ad Preferences section of your Facebook or Instagram account.
• Google lets you do the same at myadcenter.google.com, and offers a browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics entirely.
• Your browser's own settings can block or delete these cookies, and most browsers have a setting that limits cross-site tracking generally.

The companies involved are Meta Platforms, Inc. and its Irish affiliate, and Google LLC and its Irish affiliate. Each holds the information it collects under its own privacy policy, as an independent controller of it.

5. Why we use it, and what allows us to

Data protection law asks us to have a specific reason for each use. Ours are these:

Answering your enquiry

Because you asked us to, and because taking steps at your request before a contract is a recognised basis for it.

Arranging and running your trip

To perform the contract between us once you have booked.

Telling a host what they need to know

To perform that same contract. Where it involves health, dietary or accessibility information, we rely on your explicit consent instead — see section 6.

Taking payment and keeping accounts

To perform the contract, and to meet the tax and accounting obligations the law places on us.

Keeping the site working and secure

Our legitimate interest in running a website that is not being attacked or abused.

Measuring and targeting advertising

Your consent, given when you are asked, and withdrawable at any time.

Answering a complaint or defending a claim

Our legitimate interest in dealing with it properly, and any legal obligation that applies.

6. Health, dietary and accessibility information

A cooking class needs to know about a nut allergy. A day on foot in the old city needs to know if stairs are difficult. Information like this counts as special category data in the UK and EU, and as sensitive personal data in India, and it is treated accordingly.

• We ask only for what a host genuinely needs in order to look after you.
• We pass on only that much, to only the host or supplier concerned.
• We ask for your explicit consent before we do, and telling us in the first place is your choice.
• You can decline. If declining means an experience would not be safe or would not work, we will say so plainly rather than proceed and hope.

7. Who else sees it

Hosts and suppliers. The host family, cook, guide, driver, naturalist or property you are actually spending the time with. They receive your name, the date and time, the size of your group, and any requirement they need in order to look after you. They do not receive your payment details, and they are not permitted to use your details to market anything to you.

Our payment provider, who handles the card details we never see.

Our hosting and email providers, who process information on our instructions in order to serve this site and carry our correspondence.

WhatsApp, if you choose to message us there. WhatsApp is operated by Meta and your message reaches us through their service under their own terms and privacy policy. If you would rather not use it, email reaches us just as quickly.

Advertising and measurement platforms, as described in section 4, and only where you have agreed.

Professional advisers, insurers, and public authorities where the law requires it or where we need to establish or defend a legal claim.

That is the whole list. We do not sell personal information, and we have no interest in a business model that would require us to.

8. Where your information goes

We are in India and many of the people who write to us are not. Arranging your trip necessarily means your details reach hosts and suppliers in India, and by booking you are asking us to do exactly that.

Where information belonging to travellers in the UK or the European Economic Area is transferred outside those territories, we rely on the safeguards the law provides for it — the UK or EU standard contractual clauses, or a finding that the destination offers adequate protection. You can ask us what applies to your booking and we will tell you.

9. How long we keep it

• An enquiry that does not become a booking: up to twenty-four months, in case you come back to it, and then deleted.
• Booking and payment records: for as long as tax and accounting law requires us to keep them, which in India runs to several years after the financial year concerned.
• Correspondence about a complaint or a claim: until it is resolved, and then for as long as a claim could still be brought.
• Server logs: a short period, set by our hosting provider, and used only for security and diagnosing faults.

You can ask us to delete what we hold sooner, and we will, unless we are required to keep it — in which case we will tell you which part we are keeping and why.

10. Keeping it safe

The site is served over an encrypted connection. Access to enquiries and bookings is limited to the people arranging trips. We do not store card details. Hosts are told what they need and not more.

No arrangement is perfect. If something happens to your information that puts you at risk, we will tell you, and we will tell the relevant authority where the law requires it.

11. What you can ask us to do

Wherever you are, you can ask us to:

• Tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy.
• Correct anything that is wrong or incomplete.
• Delete it, where we are not required to keep it.
• Stop or limit a particular use of it.
• Send it to you, or to someone else, in a portable form.
• Withdraw a consent you have given, including for advertising, without affecting what was done before you withdrew it.

Email us and we will deal with it within thirty days. We do not charge for this, and we will not ask you why.

If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area and you think we have handled your information badly, you can complain to your data protection authority — the Information Commissioner's Office in the UK, or your national authority in the EEA. We would rather you told us first, but it is your right either way.

If you are in India, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 gives you rights of access, correction, erasure and grievance redressal, and the right to nominate someone to exercise them if you cannot. Write to us first; if we have not resolved it, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

12. Children

This site is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under eighteen. Children travel with us as part of a booking made by an adult responsible for them, and any information about a child reaches us from that adult.

13. Other people's sites

We link to our language partner Hindi Hour at hindihour.com, to WhatsApp, and to our own social media profiles. Once you are on somebody else's site or service, their privacy policy applies and not this one.

14. Changes to this policy

The date this was last changed is at the top of the page. If we change something that materially affects you, we will say so here, and we will tell people with a live booking directly rather than relying on them to check.