What you can expect from us, and what we ask of you.

1. These terms

These terms apply when you use this website and when you book anything with IndiCulture. By booking, you accept them for yourself and for everyone in your party, and you confirm you are eighteen or over and able to make the booking on their behalf.

Your written confirmation sits alongside these terms and describes your particular trip. Where the two differ, your confirmation is the one that governs.

2. What we arrange

• Cultural experiences in and around Jaipur — food walks, bazaar walks, and cooking in a family kitchen.
• Multi-day journeys across Rajasthan, built around an itinerary agreed with you.
• Stays with host families through IndiHome.

Hindi lessons are provided by our partner Hindi Hour at hindihour.com. We introduce you; the teaching, the payment and the terms for those are theirs, not ours.

3. Our role, and your host's

The people you spend the day with are independent — a host family, a cook, a guide, a driver, a naturalist. They are not our employees. We choose them, we visit them before we ever introduce them, we agree what they will be paid before you book, and we brief them on what you need.

So: we are responsible for arranging your trip with reasonable skill and care, for choosing hosts and suppliers with reasonable skill and care, and for being reachable and useful while you are with us. Hosts and suppliers are responsible for the service they themselves provide. Section 13 sets out what that means if something goes wrong.

Where we book something purely as an agent for you — a train ticket, a park entry, an outside hotel — that booking is between you and that provider, on their terms.

4. Enquiries, quotes, and when a booking exists

An enquiry is not a booking and commits neither of us. Prices and dates shown on this site are an indication of what things cost, not an offer.

A booking is made in four steps, in this order:

• You tell us roughly when you are coming and what interests you.
• We send you a written quote setting out the itinerary, exactly what is and is not included, the total price, when payment is due, and the cancellation terms that will apply.
• You accept it in writing and pay the deposit it asks for.
• We confirm in writing. Only at that point is there a booking, and only then are dates held for you.

Nothing is ever charged before you have seen the terms it is charged on. If a quote is unclear, ask us before you accept it rather than after.

5. Prices, and what they include

Prices on this site are in Indian Rupees and, where a per-person price is shown, are per person. They are current when published and can change until you hold a written quote. The price in your quote is fixed once you have accepted it and paid the deposit, except where a government changes a tax or a levy that applies to your booking.

What your quote includes is listed in the quote itself. Unless it says otherwise, the following are not included:

• Flights, visas, and travel to and from Rajasthan.
• Travel insurance, which section 8 requires you to have.
• Monument and park entry fees, unless your itinerary lists them.
• Meals other than those described, personal spending, and tips.

Taxes are shown in your quote at the rate applying when it is issued.

6. Paying

A deposit confirms your booking; the balance is due by the date in your confirmation. Dates are not held until the deposit reaches us, because holding a host's day means turning other people away.

If the balance is not paid by the date in your confirmation, we will contact you before doing anything else. If it remains unpaid after that, we may treat the booking as cancelled by you and the cancellation terms in your confirmation will apply.

7. If you change or cancel

Tell us as early as you can, in writing, by email. The date we receive it is the date that counts.

The cancellation terms in your confirmation apply. They are set out there in full, in figures, before you pay anything — we do not have a hidden schedule, and we will always tell you what is and is not refundable before you commit.

What we can refund depends on what has already been committed on your behalf. A host who has turned away other work, bought ingredients, or booked a vehicle for your date has already incurred that cost, and part of your payment may not be recoverable for that reason. Where a cost has not been incurred, you get it back.

Changes of date, of group size, or of who is travelling are usually possible and we will not charge you for asking. Whether they can be made without cost depends on the host and how much notice there is.

8. If we change or cancel

Occasionally something has to change — a host falls ill, a road closes, a park shuts a zone. Where the change is small, we will tell you and go ahead. Where it materially affects what you booked, we will offer you the alternative we think is closest, a different date, or a full refund of what you have paid us, and the choice is yours.

We will not cancel your booking for any reason other than one genuinely outside our control, or your failure to pay. If we do cancel for our own reasons, you get everything you have paid us back.

We are not able to reimburse flights, visas or other arrangements you have made independently, which is one of the reasons section 9 asks you to be insured.

9. Insurance — please have it

You must have travel insurance that covers medical treatment and repatriation in India, cancellation and curtailment, and your belongings. Please check that it covers everything on your itinerary, including a wildlife safari if you are doing one.

This is a condition of travelling with us. We may ask you to confirm you have it, and if you choose to travel without it you do so at your own risk and we are not responsible for costs it would have covered.

10. Passports, visas and vaccinations

Getting your passport, visa and any required vaccinations right is your responsibility, and requirements depend on your nationality rather than on your itinerary. Check with the Indian mission for your country in good time. We cannot refund a trip you cannot take because a document was not in order.

11. Fitness, health and telling us in advance

Most of what we run involves walking — often on uneven streets, sometimes up steps, in a city with real traffic. A cooking class involves a home kitchen and a hot stove. A safari involves several hours in an open vehicle on rough ground.

Tell us when you enquire about anything that affects how you get around, anything you are allergic to, and any condition a host should know about. We will tell you honestly whether an experience suits you, and we would much rather adapt a plan in advance than watch you struggle through one.

12. How we ask you to be with our hosts

Our hosts are opening their homes and their working days to you. Please arrive when you said you would, ask before photographing someone, remove your shoes where that is the custom, and take a no for an answer.

If someone's behaviour endangers another person, or is seriously disrespectful to a host or their household, we may end their part of the trip immediately and without refund, and we will arrange nothing further for them. This has never been necessary and we do not expect it to be, but our hosts should know we would.

13. Children

Children are welcome on most of what we run, and we will tell you if something is genuinely unsuitable. Anyone under eighteen must be accompanied by a responsible adult from their own party throughout, and that adult remains responsible for them.

14. Photographs

We sometimes take photographs on our experiences, and we would love to use some of them. We will ask you first, and we will not publish a photograph in which you are recognisable unless you have said yes. Saying no changes nothing about your trip, and you can change your mind later and ask us to take an image down.

If you send us a photograph to use, please only send one you took or have the right to share, and only one where anyone recognisable in it is happy to appear.

15. Risk, honestly stated

Travel in Rajasthan carries ordinary risks and we would rather name them than imply they do not exist. Traffic is busier than most visitors are used to. Street food is part of a food walk and, prepared as carefully as our hosts prepare it, still carries some risk. Heat is serious from April to June.

Wildlife parks are wild. A safari is a chance of a tiger, never a promise of one, and no part of your price is refundable because an animal did not appear.

16. If something goes wrong

Tell your host and tell us straight away, while you are still here. Almost everything can be put right on the day, and nothing can be put right after you have gone home. Someone from IndiCulture is reachable by phone the whole time you are with us, and it is the same person who arranged your trip.

If it is not resolved and you want to take it further, write to us within twenty-eight days of getting home, setting out what happened. We will answer properly.

17. What we are and are not liable for

We are liable to you for failing to arrange your trip with reasonable skill and care, and for failing to choose our hosts and suppliers with reasonable skill and care.

We are not liable for the acts or omissions of an independent host, supplier or third party beyond that duty, nor for anything genuinely outside our control as described in section 18, nor for loss that was not a foreseeable result of anything we did wrong.

Where we are liable, our total liability for a booking is limited to the amount you paid us for it — except that nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

None of this affects rights you have as a consumer under the law of your own country that cannot be signed away.

18. Things outside anyone's control

Neither of us is liable for failing to do what these terms require where it is prevented by something genuinely beyond reasonable control — including extreme weather, flood, fire, earthquake, epidemic, war, civil unrest, terrorism, strike, the closure of a road, park or monument, or an act of government. Where that happens we will do what we reasonably can to offer you an alternative or a refund of what has not already been committed on your behalf.

19. This website

The text, photographs, itineraries and design on this site belong to IndiCulture or to the people who made them, and are not to be copied or republished without permission. You are welcome to read, share links, and print pages for planning your own trip.

We keep the site accurate and up to date as best we can. Prices and availability change, and an error on a page does not oblige either of us to honour it — your written quote is what binds us.

20. Law, and where a dispute would be heard

These terms are governed by the laws of India, and the the courts at Jaipur, Rajasthan have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not deprive you of the protection of any mandatory consumer law of the country you live in.

We would much rather resolve something by talking to you than by either of us going anywhere near a court.

21. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The version that applies to your booking is the one published when you booked, and we will not change the terms of a booking that is already confirmed. The date at the top of this page tells you when it last changed.