Privacy Policy

Legal

Last updated: October 2026 · Applies to travelescape.in

Plain English first. Full detail below. We collect very little. We share nothing. We do not sell your data. Ever.

At a Glance

What we collect

No accounts. Anonymous page-view statistics; your email address and note if you write to us; your name, email and comment if you comment on a post or reply in a community discussion (the name, your city if you give it, and the comment are published after review; the email never is); your email address if you join the essay list; the stars you give if you rate a post (no name, no email, no cookie); the question you type into Ask, which goes to Anthropic to write the answer and is not kept by us unless you press "Save this question". If you are a guest writer we have invited, the details you give when you sign the Contributor Agreement. If you are in our group and agree to share community notes, the name you want shown, your city and (if you agree on the site) your email address; your notes and photos are published with that name after a person reads them.

What we never do

Sell your data. Share it with advertisers. Build profiles. Send spam. Use invasive tracking. This is a small editorial site, not an ad business.

Your control

You can request your data, correct it, or ask us to delete it at any time. Email us: nilabh@travelescape.in

No surveillance

We use privacy-respecting analytics only. No Facebook Pixel. No Google Ads tracking. No cross-site tracking cookies. No session recording.

Who We Are

Travelescape is an independent travel journal based in India, owned and run by one person, Nilabh Ranjan, in Bangalore. Write to nilabh@travelescape.in.

There is no data team, no marketing department and no advertising business behind it. When you write with a data request, Nilabh reads it.

What Information We Collect

All of Travelescape can be read freely without providing any personal information. The site has no accounts and no login. It has five forms: "Stay in touch", which sends us a note; the comment form under each post; the reply form in community discussions; the essay list sign-up; and the star rating at the end of each post. A sixth, the Contributor Agreement, opens only with a link we email to a writer we have invited; a seventh, at travelescape.in/share-with-te/, is for members of our group who agree to share community notes.

We only collect information in the following specific cases:

When you visit: the pages you read, the page that sent you here, your browser and device type, and an approximate location worked out from your IP address. Why: to understand which writing people read.
When you write to us (by email or through the Stay in touch form): your email address, your name if you give it, whatever you put in your message, and, from the form, the page you wrote from. Why: to reply to you.
When you comment on a post: your name, your email address, your comment and the post it is on. Why: to read it and, if it fits, publish it under the post, to reply if needed, and to email you once when it is up. The name and comment are shown with the date; the email address never is.
When you reply in a community discussion: your first name, your city if you give it, your email address, your reply, and your okay to publish it under your first name. Why: to read it and, if it fits, publish it in the discussion, and to email you once when it is up. The first name, city and reply are shown with the date; the email address never is.
When you join the essay list: your email address. Why: to send you new essays, about once a month, after you confirm by email. Kit keeps the list and sends the emails; every email has an unsubscribe link. To stop automated sign-ups, we keep a one-way code made from your IP address for two days; it cannot be turned back into your address.
When you sign the Contributor Agreement (only writers we have invited): your full name, the name for your byline, your email address, your city and country, a short bio and a link if you give them, your answers about your essay (or, if your posts are already on the site, about those posts, including whether you were paid for them), the version of the Contributor Terms you agreed to, the date and time, and the country your connection came from. Why: it is the record of what we agreed, for you and for us. A copy is emailed to you and to us.
When you agree to share community notes (at travelescape.in/share-with-te/, or by replying "yes" to Nilabh on WhatsApp): your full name, the name to show, your city if you give it, your email address if you agree on the site, the version of the Contributor Terms you agreed to and the date. Nothing is collected from WhatsApp or Facebook by any program: a person copies a message of yours by hand, and only one you allowed. Before a note is published, its words and photos (with location and camera details removed, and phone numbers and email addresses hidden) are sent to Anthropic so its model can flag anything that should not be shown; a person then reads it. A published note shows the name you chose, your city, the month and year, and your words and photos, never your email address or phone number. Why: to keep what travellers share, with their name on it.
When you ask a question (Ask, on the Search page): your question, and nothing else about you, is sent to Anthropic with passages from our own posts, so that its model can write an answer from them. Why: to answer it. We do not keep the question: we count only how many questions were asked and answered, and what they cost. If you mark an answer not useful and press "Send this question to our writers", we keep the words of the question and the date, nothing about you, until we have read it. Marking an answer useful or not is only counted, against the pages the answer quoted. If you press "Check the latest on the web", your question and our answer go to Anthropic, whose web search looks up the latest public pages on it; the pages it used are listed under that answer, and nothing more about you is sent. To limit how many questions (and votes) one visitor can send, we keep a one-way code made from your IP address for a day; it cannot be turned back into your address.
When you rate a post: the number of stars and the post. Why: to show readers how others found each guide, and to see which guides need work. To count one vote per reader per post, we keep a one-way code made from your IP address and the page for 30 days; it cannot be turned back into your address, and the address itself is not kept. No name, email or cookie is involved.
Hosting: your IP address and browser type appear in the hosting provider's request logs, as they do for any website. Why: to keep the site running and protect it from abuse.

Comments and discussions. Comments and discussion replies are read before they appear, and are shown with only the name (and, in discussions, the city) the writer gave, the date and the text. Once one is published we email the writer once to say so, and then delete their email address. Comments left before September 2026 are kept under their posts the same way; the email addresses, IP addresses and websites given with them are not shown anywhere on the site.

The Unscripted Circle. The Circle, our old email membership, has closed. There are no more Circle sign-ups, logins or dispatches. If you were a member and want your email address deleted, write to us.

How We Use Your Information

We use your information only for the purpose it was collected:

To understand how readers use the site so we can improve it.
To reply when you write to us.
To publish comments and discussion replies, after reading them, and to tell you once when yours is up.
To send new essays to the essay list, only after you have confirmed.
To protect the site from automated abuse.

We do not use your information for advertising, profiling, or any commercial purpose beyond operating this editorial site.

Cookies

We do not use advertising cookies, retargeting cookies, or third-party tracking cookies.

Analytics — On travelescape.in, PostHog stores a random identifier in a first-party cookie and in your browser's local storage, so that repeat visits are not counted as new visitors. It is not linked to your name or email.
Light or dark theme — If you choose Light or Dark from the menu, your browser remembers the choice in its local storage. It never leaves your device.
Offline reading — Your browser keeps a copy of the pages you read here (the most recent 60), with their fonts and images, so they still open without a connection. The copies stay on your device and are never sent to us; clearing this site's data in your browser removes them.
Embedded videos — Pages with a YouTube video may let YouTube set its own cookies (see Embedded Content below).

You can disable cookies in your browser settings at any time. The site will still function without them.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. Full stop.

We share data only with the service providers strictly necessary to operate the site:

Vercel — hosting provider. Serves the website, keeps short-lived request logs, counts page views with Vercel Web Analytics, and measures how fast pages load for visitors with Vercel Speed Insights. Neither uses cookies or identifies you.
Google Workspace — our email. Messages you send, by email or through the forms, are delivered to and kept in our Google Workspace mailbox, and so are the copies of each Contributor Agreement.
Kit — the essay list. If you ask for new essays, your address goes to Kit, which sends a confirmation email first and an unsubscribe link in every email after. If you are a contributor, your name, email, byline, city, country and bio are also kept there, tagged as a contributor, so we can write to our writers; if you agree to share community notes on the site, your first name, email, the name to show and your city, tagged as a community member. Neither puts you on the essay list. Their privacy policy.
Upstash — a small database that keeps messages from the Stay in touch form, and comments and discussion replies waiting to be read, until we delete them or publish them. A published comment or reply keeps only the name, city if given, date and text; the email address is removed. It also keeps the Contributor Agreements writers have signed, and community notes with their photos while they wait to be read, until each is published or deleted.
Anthropic — makes Claude, the AI model behind Ask. When you ask a question, the question and passages from our posts go to Anthropic's API, which writes the answer. It also reads each community note and its photos before a person reviews it, to flag anything that should not be shown (phone numbers and email addresses are hidden first, and location and camera details removed from the photos). Anthropic does not train its models on it, and deletes it within 30 days (longer only if something breaks its usage policy). Their privacy policy.
PostHog — privacy-respecting analytics, stored in PostHog's EU region. Their privacy policy.

These providers process data only to support the functioning of the website and are bound by their own privacy commitments.

Embedded Content

Some articles include embedded YouTube videos. This content behaves as if you visited YouTube directly — it may collect data and use cookies independently of Travelescape.

We do not control these services.

How Long We Keep Your Data

Messages you send us: as long as the conversation needs, or until you ask us to delete them.
Essay list: until you unsubscribe, which you can do from any email.
Comments and discussion replies: published ones indefinitely, unless you ask for yours to be deleted; the email address is deleted once we have told you it is up; ones not published stay only in our mailbox.
Contributor Agreements: for as long as the essay is on the site, and three years after, because the licence you give us has no end date and the record must outlast any question about it. You can ask us to delete your profile and contact details at any time; the signed agreement itself we must keep while your essay is up.
Community notes: published notes until you ask for them to come down (then within a day); a note waiting for review, and its photos, until it is published or deleted; your agreement, as long as any note of yours is on the site and three years after.
Questions you ask: not kept by us; only the count of questions and answers. Anthropic deletes them within 30 days. A question you choose to save (its words and the date only) stays until we have read it.
Ratings: the totals for each post (how many stars, from how many readers) indefinitely; the one-way code that stops repeat votes for 30 days.
Analytics: kept in PostHog and Vercel Web Analytics, never linked to your name or email.
Hosting logs: a short period, set by Vercel.

Your Rights

Regardless of where you are located, you can contact us at any time to:

Access — request a copy of personal data we hold about you.
Correct — ask us to fix inaccurate information.
Delete — ask us to erase your data ("right to be forgotten"), including a comment you left in the past.
Object — object to any processing you believe is not justified.

EU / EEA residents (GDPR) — You have enforceable rights under the General Data Protection Regulation. You can withdraw any consent you have given at any time.

California residents (CCPA) — We do not sell personal information. You have the right to know what data is collected and to request deletion. We will respond to verifiable requests within 45 days.

To use any of these rights, write to nilabh@travelescape.in.

Data Security

The site is served over HTTPS. Its pages are static, and there are no reader accounts or passwords to be exposed. Messages and comments waiting to be read are kept in a small database that only the site's own code can reach, and the one admin area needs the owner's Google Workspace sign-in.

To keep readers safe, our system routinely checks the links on our pages and removes any that are dead, no longer secure, or now lead to a different site. These checks visit only the linked pages and involve no reader data.

No transmission over the internet is 100% secure. If you have a security concern, please email us directly.

Children

Travelescape is for adults and families, and children read it too. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 without a parent's or guardian's permission: if you are under 18, please ask one before you comment, share a note or join the essay list. If we learn that we hold a child's details without that permission, we delete them. Ask Travelescape takes phone numbers, email addresses and ID numbers out of a question before it is read, and keeps nothing about the person asking. Nothing that could identify a child appears on the site without a parent's or guardian's consent (Terms, Children and Safety). A parent or guardian can ask us to remove anything about their child at nilabh@travelescape.in, and we will, at once.

Changes to This Policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page. We will not retroactively reduce your rights without notice.

The current version is always at travelescape.in/privacy-policy/.

Questions?

If anything here is unclear or you have a privacy request, write to us.

nilabh@travelescape.in

Nilabh reads every message and replies within a few days.