The questions travellers actually ask us

Use the Plan My Tour form, the enquiry form on any tour page, or simply email us. The more you tell us at this stage, the better the first reply will be. Useful things to include:

• Your travel dates, or the month if dates are not fixed
• How many adults and children, and the ages of any elders travelling
• The places or temples you definitely want to cover
• Roughly what you want to spend, so we can pitch the stays correctly

A planner comes back with a suggested route rather than a price list. You can then change it as many times as you need before anything is confirmed.

It depends entirely on where you are going, so there is no single answer. As a guide:

• October to March suits most of the plains: Delhi, Agra, Rajasthan, Varanasi, Madhya Pradesh and the Golden Triangle.
• November to February is the pleasant window for Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Goa.
• April to September is when the high hills open up, including Ladakh, Spiti and the upper Himachal and Uttarakhand valleys.
• Char Dham and high Himalayan yatras run only for a season, roughly late April or May until October or November, and exact opening and closing dates are announced each year by the temple authorities.

Tell us your dates and we will tell you honestly whether the route you want works in that window, or suggest a better one.

Yes, and most of what we operate is custom. The packages you see listed are starting points. We change the number of nights in each place, the pace, the class of stay and the order of the route to suit your group. If you want to combine a pilgrimage circuit with a few relaxed days at the end, or add a wedding or a family function in the middle, that is normal work for us.

A booking is confirmed with an advance payment, and the balance falls due before you travel. The exact amounts and the dates they are due are written into your quote and your confirmation, so you always have them in writing before you pay anything. Peak season bookings, special trains and some pilgrimage permits need earlier payment because the underlying booking itself has to be secured early. The full position is set out in our Terms and Conditions.

Email info@waytoindia.com with your booking reference, or call your coordinator directly. Please put any cancellation in writing so there is a record of the date, because the date is what decides the charge.

What it costs depends on how close to departure you are, and on the rules of the hotels, airlines and railways underlying your booking. Some elements, notably air tickets, special trains and certain permits, can be non-refundable from the moment they are issued. We tell you which parts of your itinerary those are before you pay. See our Terms and Conditions for the full schedule.

Every quote we send lists inclusions and exclusions as two separate lists, because vagueness here is where travellers get caught out. As a rule:

• Usually included: accommodation on the stated room and meal plan, transport with a driver for the whole route, tolls, parking and driver allowances, and any sightseeing specifically listed.
• Usually excluded: airfare, monument and museum entry tickets, camera and video fees, local guide charges, meals not stated, tips, and anything personal in nature.

If you would rather have monument tickets and guides built into a single price, say so and we will quote it that way.

Most foreign nationals need a visa to enter India. The main exceptions are citizens of Nepal and Bhutan under the usual conditions, and holders of an OCI card, who do not need a separate tourist visa. India also operates an e-Visa scheme for many nationalities, applied for online before travel.

Visa categories, fees, validity and the list of eligible nationalities change, so we deliberately do not print them here. Check the official Government of India portal at indianvisaonline.gov.in before you book flights, and confirm with the Indian mission in your country. Getting the visa is your responsibility, but we will tell you what your itinerary needs.

Yes. Several regions need an Inner Line Permit or a Protected Area Permit, including parts of Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and certain border areas. Some pilgrimages and treks have their own registration or health requirements. We flag all of this at the planning stage, tell you what documents you need to carry, and arrange the permits we are able to arrange on your behalf.

If you hold a valid OCI card you do not need a separate tourist visa, and you should travel with the card together with your foreign passport. Everything else is planned the same way. Because a lot of our travellers are NRI and OCI families, we are used to multi-generation groups, temple visits with elders, and itineraries that have to fit around a wedding or a family function. We also have our own representatives in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia if you would rather talk it through in your own time zone.

You are given a named coordinator who has your itinerary in front of them, plus direct numbers for the ground team in each city on your route. If something changes on the day, a delayed train, a closed road, a temple that has altered its timings, tell your coordinator and we rebuild the plan for you. That is part of the service, not an extra.

India is travelled safely by millions of visitors every year, and the same common sense you would use in any unfamiliar country carries you most of the way. Keep your documents and valuables secure, use transport arranged through us rather than hailed on the street, and dress modestly at religious sites.

For solo women travellers and for groups of women travelling together we plan more conservatively by default: road transfers scheduled in daylight wherever the route allows, stays chosen in busy and well-lit locations, drivers from operators we have worked with over years, and a coordinator you check in with. If this is a concern for your trip, say so at the enquiry stage and we will build the itinerary around it.

We do not sell insurance. We do strongly recommend that you arrange comprehensive travel insurance in your own country before you travel, covering medical treatment, emergency evacuation, trip cancellation and baggage. This matters most on high altitude routes such as Ladakh, Spiti, Char Dham and Kailash Mansarovar, where evacuation is expensive and weather disruption is common. Check that your policy actually covers the altitude and activities on your itinerary.

We collect only the information a booking actually requires, your contact details, the traveller names and document details needed for hotels, trains and permits, and we transmit it over an encrypted connection. We do not sell your data. Where a payment is made online it is handled by the payment provider, not stored by us. The full position, including how long we keep information and how you can ask us to delete it, is in our Privacy Policy.