Cancellations and refunds

Every journey on this site carries its own cancellation line. You will find the same sentence in three places: on the journey page before you book, in the confirmation email, and on the voucher itself. That sentence is the one that governs your booking — this page explains the pattern behind it.

Windows are counted from the start time of the journey in India Standard Time, not from the date you booked and not from your own timezone.

Cancel inside the window and you pay nothing. Cancel outside it and the amount already committed to the operator, the hotel or the ticketing authority is not recoverable.

Where a package includes a rail leg or a prepaid hotel night, the strictest component sets the window for that part of the booking. We separate it out on the voucher so you can see exactly which element is at risk.

Do it in writing so there is a timestamp. Either:

• Open Track a booking with your order reference and the email you booked under, and use the cancellation link there; or
• Email info@omeegatravel.com with the order reference in the subject line.

We acknowledge every cancellation within one working day and state, in that reply, the exact amount coming back to you and the date we expect it to land. A phone call alone does not cancel a booking — we will always ask you to confirm it in writing.

Telling the operator or the guide directly does not cancel anything with us. Tell us.

• Inside the window — 100% of what you paid, including the GST component. There is no cancellation fee and no processing charge.
• Outside the window — whatever we can recover from the suppliers, which on a day tour is usually nothing and on a package is usually the portion not yet prepaid. We will show you the breakdown rather than quote a flat percentage.
• Reducing the party size — the per-person amount for the travellers removed, under the same window as a full cancellation. Below the minimum party size for a private journey, the price per remaining person may change; we will tell you before we act on it.
• Third-party fees — visa fees, insurance premiums and anything you bought elsewhere are not ours to refund.

Refunds go back to the original payment method. We cannot redirect a refund to a different card, account or UPI ID, however convenient that would be — that restriction comes from the gateway, not from us.

We initiate the refund with the payment gateway within 24 hours of confirming the cancellation. From there:

• UPI — usually 2 to 5 working days.
• Debit and credit cards — 5 to 7 working days, and it may appear on the following statement rather than immediately.
• Netbanking — 5 to 7 working days.

Call it 5 to 7 working days as the working rule. Weekends, bank holidays and the last two days of a financial year all stretch it. If it is longer than seven working days, write to us with the order reference and we will chase the gateway with the transaction id — that usually resolves it in a day.

UPI refunds confuse people, so here is the mechanic.

When you pay by UPI, the money moves from your bank to the acquiring bank against a reference number (the RRN). A refund is a fresh transaction that pushes the money back along the same path to the same VPA or bank account. It is not a cancellation of the original payment — the original stays on your statement and the credit appears separately, which is why your balance looks briefly as though you were charged twice.

• The credit lands in the bank account linked to the UPI ID you paid from, even if that app has since been changed or deleted.
• We give you the RRN on request. Your bank can trace the refund with it in minutes.
• If a payment failed but the money left your account, no booking exists and the bank auto-reverses it, normally within 3 to 5 working days, without us doing anything. Write to us anyway with the UTR and we will confirm from our side that nothing was captured.
• Refunds cannot be made to a different UPI ID from the one used to pay. This is an NPCI rule.

Almost always the better option, and often free.

Inside the cancellation window, a date change costs nothing beyond any difference in the price of the new date. Outside it, we will ask the operator — a day tour moved to another day in the same week is usually agreed without argument; a peak-season package moved in the last week rarely is.

Ask before you cancel. Once a booking is cancelled the slot is released and getting it back is somebody else's decision. The full detail is in the booking policy.

A no-show is a traveller who does not appear at the pickup point and does not contact us or the operator. No-shows are not refundable — the guide waited, the vehicle ran and the entry slot was held.

Being late is not the same thing. Call the number on your voucher: guides will normally wait 30 minutes, and a delayed flight or train, told to us in time, is treated as a change of plan rather than a no-show. On time-slotted entries — the Taj Mahal at first light, a heritage train, a scheduled boat — the slot itself cannot be held, and that portion of the cost is lost even when the rest of the day is rescued.

Entry refused for missing identification is treated as a no-show for that ticket.

Where we cancel for any reason inside our control — an operator falls through, a vehicle is not available, we made a mistake — you get a full refund, no deductions, regardless of the window, or a credit valid for 12 months if you would rather.

Where a journey cannot run for reasons outside anyone's control — a cyclone, a bandh, a monument closed by order, a flood on the route — we offer a new date or a credit first, and refund whatever we can recover from the suppliers. We do not keep a margin on a trip that did not happen.

In neither case can we reimburse flights, trains or hotels you booked separately around the journey. That is what travel insurance is for, and we recommend it on every multi-day booking.

If a refund is wrong or late, write to us first — it is faster than a chargeback, and we would rather fix it than defend it. Unresolved, escalate to our grievance officer: acknowledged within 24 hours, resolved within 15 days.

Raising a chargeback with your bank while we are actively processing a refund tends to freeze both, and the money then moves on the bank's timetable rather than ours. Your rights under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and the option of the National Consumer Helpline (1915) remain open to you at any point.