Cancellation & refunds

A place on an Expevida experience is held by paying a registration amount of 20% of the total trip cost. This is what confirms your seat, your room and your share of everything we book ahead on your behalf.

The registration amount is non-refundable. It is spent the day you pay it — on the advance a resort needs to hold a room, on the vehicle we block for the date, on the people we commit to. We cannot recover it if you cancel, so we do not pretend we can.

• The balance is the remaining amount after registration, and is due before the trip departs. We will tell you the exact due date in writing when you register — it is typically a week or more ahead of departure, because that is when our own vendor payments fall due.
• If the balance is not paid by its due date, we may release your place. In that case the registration amount is still non-refundable, and nothing further is owed by you.
• Cancel after paying the balance but before departure and the balance is refunded in full. Only the registration amount is retained.

• Any time before departure: you keep nothing back except the 20% registration, which is not refunded. Everything you have paid beyond it comes back to you.
• On the day, or once the trip has begun: no refund is possible. Rooms are occupied, vehicles are running and vendors have been paid.
• Missing the pickup, or leaving a trip partway through, is treated as a cancellation on the day. We will always try to help you rejoin the group, but we cannot refund the unused portion.
• Transferring your place to someone else is usually possible and costs nothing, as long as you tell us before we issue the final guest list. Just ask.

To cancel, email hello@expevida.com from the address you booked with. The cancellation takes effect from the time that email reaches us, and we will acknowledge it in writing.

Occasionally we cancel a departure ourselves — too few guests to run it well, a road closed, a partner who cannot deliver what we promised. When that happens the cause is ours, so the cost is ours:

• You receive a full refund of everything you have paid us, registration included.
• Or, if you prefer, we move your full amount to another date or another experience with no fee.
• We do not refund what you spent getting to us — your own flights, trains or hotels booked separately. Please hold off on non-refundable travel until we confirm a departure is running.

Monsoon, landslides, forest-department closures, strikes, and orders from any authority can force a change. Where we can, we substitute something of comparable quality and tell you before you travel. Where a trip genuinely cannot run, we treat it as a cancellation by us and the section above applies.

What we will not do is push a group into weather or terrain we think is unsafe in order to protect a booking. If a guide calls it off, it is off.

• Refunds go back to the same method and the same person that paid — we cannot redirect a refund to a different account.
• We initiate refunds within 7 working days of confirming the cancellation in writing.
• Once online payments go live, refunds will be initiated through the same payment gateway; your bank then takes its own time, typically 5–10 working days, to post the money.
• Payment gateway charges on the original transaction are not retained by us and, where the gateway does not return them, are deducted from the refund. We will show you the figure.

If anything here would change your mind about registering, ask us first — get in touch and we will put the answer in writing. A policy you had to squint at is not a policy we want to rely on.