Privacy policy

This policy explains what personal information Nepal Travel Mate ("Nepal Travel Mate", "we", "us") collects from people who contact us about trekking and tour services, and what we do with it. It is written to meet the standards of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as well as Nepali consumer law, because many of the trekkers we work with come from the EU and UK.

Who we are

Nepal Travel Mate is a Kathmandu-based trekking and tour operator Thamel, Kathmandu. We are the data controller for personal data submitted through this website and through direct correspondence (email, WhatsApp, phone) you initiate with us.

What we collect

When you make an enquiry or booking, we collect the information you give us: your name, email address, phone number (including WhatsApp), country of residence, the treks or trips you are interested in, your approximate dates, your group size, and anything else you choose to tell us. When you book a trek we additionally collect passport details, date of birth, emergency contact, and any medical information you disclose, because the Nepal Tourism Board permit process and our insurers require it.

When you visit the site we automatically collect your IP address, browser user-agent, and the pages you view. We use this only for fraud prevention, debugging, and aggregate traffic analysis.

Why we collect it

We use enquiry information to respond to you, to prepare an itinerary, and to follow up on the trip you asked about. We use booking information to operate your trek safely, to issue permits (TIMS, ACAP, MCAP, Sagarmatha National Park entry, or restricted-area permits as applicable to your route), to arrange insurance verification, and to comply with Nepali tax and tourism authority reporting requirements. We do not sell your data to anyone.

How long we keep it

Enquiry data is kept for 24 months from your last contact with us, after which it is anonymised. Booking and accounting records are kept for 7 years to comply with Nepali income tax record-keeping rules. Marketing emails are sent only if you have explicitly opted in, and you can unsubscribe at any time from the link in any email we send you.

Lawful basis

Where GDPR applies, our lawful bases for processing are Article 6(1)(b) — performance of a contract you have asked us to enter into (your booking) — and Article 6(1)(f) — legitimate interest in responding to enquiries and improving our service. For special-category data such as medical disclosures, we rely on your explicit consent under Article 9(2)(a).

Sharing

We share data only with parties who need it to deliver your trek. That can include the specific guide and porter team assigned to your trip, the teahouses on your route (your name and dietary needs only), our payment processor for any deposit you pay online, our hosting provider, and our managed database. Each of these parties is contractually required to keep your data confidential and to process it only on our instructions.

International transfers

Our website and database are hosted in Cloudflare and Hostinger data centres. Where data moves between Nepal and the EU, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and on your explicit consent at the point of enquiry.

Your rights

You have the right to access the data we hold about you, to correct it if it is wrong, to ask us to erase it, to ask for it to be exported to you in a portable format, and to object to processing on legitimate-interest grounds. To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@nepaltravelmate.com and we will respond inside 30 days. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

Cookies

This site uses essential session cookies only — they keep you signed in if you are a returning trekker and keep the booking form from losing your progress. We do not run advertising trackers, third-party analytics pixels, or social-media remarketing tags on the public site.

Contact

For any privacy-related question, write to us at privacy@nepaltravelmate.com or by post: Nepal Travel Mate, Thamel, Kathmandu, Kathmandu, Nepal.