Different kinds of people have joined us on our journeys — solo women travellers, couples, college students, working professionals, people on a sabbatical, retired people, and people from other countries, etc.

We encourage great diversity in our groups as it enhances our learning and our ability to build richer relationships across the barriers of age, gender, and culture.

Keeping with the spirit of responsible travel, we try and stay mostly in family-run homestays and guesthouses that are trying to keep their traditional earth-friendly practices alive. This may include the following:

• Simple and clean rooms in traditionally built houses
• Homestays that are powered by renewable energy sources. These are not air-conditioned rooms
• Simple and clean tents to camp in when we go trekking
• Solar powered water heaters in the bathrooms — hot water may not be available on cold and cloudy days
• Dry compost toilets in desert regions like Ladakh
• Locally grown food + local cuisines
• We encourage our participants to carry their own water-bottles and refill these at our homestays
• We avoid the use of plastic bags that cause unnecessary non-biodegradable waste
• We try and keep our consumption of processed foods to a minimum on our journeys to avoid generating plastic waste

NOTE:
These are what we aim for on every journey. At some places, however, we have to go with more conventional accommodations as the earth-friendly alternatives that we look for, do not exist yet.

We have 10 solid years of experience in organising and conducting our journeys. Each of our trips is designed, in consultation with our local partners, to be comfortable and very safe.

Before traveling to any place, we always check with our local partners for the latest updates on the ground situation. We also keep our participants appraised on the situation. We only travel to these places if we are 100% sure of the safety of our participants.

Our local partners are also chosen for their expertise and track record with safety. In the places we visit, we already have an established relationship of working with our local partners over 5-10 years.

We design and arrange customised trips through our Green Homestays program. However, in keeping with the spirit of responsible travel, we have some important considerations to keep in mind before we take on such assignments

• We partner mostly with earth-friendly homestays and guesthouses that aim to provide a comfortable experience while keeping the environmental impact low. We avoid large hotel chains and resorts that do not focus on being earth-friendly. Please also read the ‘How are our trips earth-friendly?’ section in the FAQs, for more details on what you can expect on our trips.
• Since you will be staying at the homes of people with whom we have built up a strong relationship over years, we ask that you treat them with respect and follow the rules and conventions of their homes/ community. For example, we cannot expect services like room service or a full-fledged menu offering Indian/Italian/Chinese food at a homestay in Ladakh or Meghalaya. In case you’re unsure of what would be the appropriate behaviour, you could always check with your homestay host before doing something.
• Apart from fun activities like trekking, river-rafting, or mountain biking, we use our journeys to focus on what our participants could learn through their visit. Accordingly, we try and arrange interactions with local organisations and individuals that are doing excellent work on environmental and social issues.
• We encourage the consumption of the traditional local cuisine as much as possible on the trips we arrange. This is so that our local partners are encouraged to continue cooking their traditional foods and don’t have to switch over to providing the generic restaurant menu that passes off as ’Indian food’.
• We ask our groups to avoid the consumption of packaged products and plastic bottles on the trip, to minimise the amount of non-biodegradable waste that is generated. Fresh filtered water is easily available at the homestays.
• We don’t do flight or train reservations as we don’t have any tie-ups with the Railways or with any airlines — we manage only the local travel at the destinations our groups visit.

In case these ideas resonate with you, we are happy to design and arrange customised trips for you and your family. Please get in touch with us at info@journeyswithmeaning.org or on the numbers provided in our Contact Us page.

Participation on any of our journeys will be treated as confirmed, only when the advance payment (as listed in the trip brochure) has been made to us by the participant.

CANCELLATIONS 

FOR OPEN GROUPS
In case you cancel your participation after paying us the advance for a journey, you will forfeit:

• From confirmation until 45 days before trip date – 10% of trip cost
• 45-30 days before trip date – 25% of trip cost
• 7-0 days before trip date – 75% of trip cost

FOR SCHOOLS
In case you cancel your participation after paying us the confirmation advance for a journey, you will forfeit:

• 90 days before trip date – 25% of trip fee 
• 60 days before trip date – 50% of trip fee 
• 30 days before trip date – 100% of trip fee

Alternatively, if you find someone to take your place, there will be no cancellation charges in any of the slabs. We will be happy to refund your advance in full, in that case.

In case any of our journeys needs to be delayed, shortened, extended, or cancelled due to circumstances outside of our control, such as Acts of God, adverse weather conditions, political instability, riots, strikes, etc., Journeys With Meaning cannot be held liable for any losses that participants may have to incur on account of the journey being delayed, extended, shortened, or cancelled.

On our side, we promise to keep participants informed about the ground situation in the event that unforeseen circumstances or circumstances outside of our control threaten our journey in any way, so that participants can either cancel or alter their plans well in advance where possible. 

Journeys With Meaning requires a minimum number of bookings for a journey to be viable. We shall go ahead with a journey only once we receive that minimum number of bookings. In case Journeys With Meaning does not receive the minimum number of bookings, or if that minimum number is reduced due to cancellations or for other reasons, Journeys With Meaning retains the right to cancel the relevant journey at any time up to 4 weeks prior to the departure date. In these circumstances, the participant shall not be entitled to make a claim for loss arising as a consequence of cancellation. 

REFUNDS
Depending on when you cancel, you will receive a refund, after the relevant deductions have been made, as described in our CANCELLATIONS section above. After you write to us at info@journeyswithmeaning.org to let us know about your cancellation, you will receive the refund within 10 working days.

INSURANCE
When traveling, it helps to purchase travel insurance to help offset any damages due to loss of luggage, injury, illness, etc. The cost of travel insurance is not included in the trip costs. Participants have to arrange for this on their own. In case you choose to not purchase any travel insurance for the trip you are undertaking with Journeys With Meaning, you expressly agree to indemnify Journeys With Meaning against all third-party claims, actions, damages and remedies which may be brought against us in respect of your participation in the holiday.

Your privacy is important to us.

It is Journeys With Meaning’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our website. Accordingly, we have developed this privacy policy in order for you to understand how we collect, use, communicate, disclose and otherwise make use of personal information. We have outlined our privacy policy below.

• We will collect personal information by lawful and fair means and, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the individual concerned.
• Before or at the time of collecting personal information, we will identify the purposes for which information is being collected.
• We will collect and use personal information solely for fulfilling those purposes specified by us and for other ancillary purposes, unless we obtain the consent of the individual concerned or as required by law.
• Personal data should be relevant to the purposes for which it is to be used, and, to the extent necessary for those purposes, should be accurate, complete, and up-to-date.
• We will protect personal information by using reasonable security safeguards against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.
• We will make readily available to customers information about our policies and practices relating to the management of personal information.
• We will only retain personal information for as long as necessary for the fulfilment of those purposes.

We are committed to conducting our business in accordance with these principles in order to ensure that the confidentiality of personal information is protected and maintained. Journeys With Meaning may change this privacy policy from time to time at Journeys With Meaning’s sole discretion.