Trayaan - Travel, Wander, Live - A unique travel experiences and perspectives blog
Thank You for printing! Visit www.trayaan.com for more!

Privacy Policy

Last Updated on: 06 December, 2023

Namaskar! 🙏
Thank you for visiting trayaan.com

We respect your privacy, and we are committed to your right to privacy and to ensure the security and confidentiality of your personal information. We encourage you to read our privacy statement to understand what types of personally identifiable information we collect and how we use this information.

By continuing to browse our website trayaan.com, you agree to our use of cookies, Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

The terms “Trayaan”, “trayaan.com”, “this website”, “our website”, “we”, “us” or “our”, which are used throughout this document refer to the website trayaan.com, its subdomains, its other websites or services, its owners, the managers, and associates. The terms “you”, “your”, “visitor” or “user” refers to you, the user or the visitor of this website.

Information Collection

Information collected by trayaan.com and how it is used

Personally identifiable information

We do not collect personally identifiable information about individuals except when individuals voluntarily provide such information.

When does trayaan.com collect Personally Identifiable Information?

Personally identifiable information are only collected when you voluntarily provide us the same while communicating with us by e-mail, contact or feedback forms, or any other means of messaging or communicating platforms. We also collect your email address when you voluntarily subscribe to our Email Newsletters.

We only collect the necessary personally identifiable information in order to respond to your messages or requests for our services.

What does this collected information include?

Personally identifiable information includes, but is not limited to, first and last name, physical address, e-mail address, phone number, and any other information that itself identifies or when tied to the above information, may identify you as a specific individual.

Do we share the Personally Identifiable Information with anyone else?

We do not share your personally identifiable information with any third party unless you expressly allow us to do so, or in cases given in the Disclosure/Sharing of Information section below.

Do we retain Personally Identifiable Information?

We never retain your personally identifiable information unless we require it to respond to your queries or messages you send us through email or through our contact or feedback forms, or in cases given in the Disclosure/Sharing of Information section below.

If you've opted in to get notified, on any of our contact forms

If you have chosen to, by checking the box on any of our contact or feedback forms, trayaan.com and its service partners may use your personally identifiable information like your e-mail address to inform you of new features, services, products or announcements from trayaan.com and its affiliates. This checkbox remains unchecked by default, unless you yourself opt in to get notified by checking the box. You can opt out of these promotional communications from us anytime by sending us a message, saying, "STOP promotional communications", through our Contact Us form. Just remember to correctly specify the email address you're receiving promotional communications from us, which you wish to discontinue. On receiving your message, we will remove your details, such as name and email address, from our records and you will stop receiving promotional communications from us.

Please note that if you leave the aforementioned box unchecked in our contact or feedback forms, trayaan.com may still contact you regarding the subject of your message(s) that you sent to us through any of our contact or feedback forms, and we shall use the information you provided, like your email address, only to contact you to respond to your message(s).

About our E-Mail Newsletters

The email addresses provided by you to receive our E-mail Newsletters will not be shared with anyone else unless you expressly allow us to do so. We use the email address you provide us for the sole purpose of delivering you our E-mail Newsletters and updates from trayaan.com and to contact you in case there are any changes to our email newsletters service or only in case of a critical notification regarding to this service. We shall never use your email address for any other purpose. We shall never send you any unsolicited emails or spam. We use Substack, a third-party service, to provide you our E-Mail Newsletters.

In case we choose to migrate and provide the email newsletters service through a different third-party vendor or service, you may be subject to the terms and privacy policies of the new service, in which case, you will be duly notified and this privacy policy page will be updated. By choosing to receive our email newsletters, you agree to receive our newsletters through a different third-party service in the future. We shall ensure that any third-party service that we may use for delivering the newsletters is trustworthy and reliable and adheres to appropriate privacy practices and conforms with privacy laws.

Nonetheless, you will always have an option to discontinue receiving our email newsletters at any time you wish to, through easy unsubscribe links at the bottom of each newsletter email that you receive from us. Once you unsubscribe to our newsletters, your email address and any other data that you submitted while registering to our newsletters, will be automatically deleted from our records.

Do we retain your e-mail addresses after you unsubscribe from our newsletters?

No, we don't. The email address you provided while subscribing to our E-mail Newsletters, will be removed from our records if you choose to unsubscribe from our E-mail Newsletters service. Every Newsletter email you receive from us contain easy unsubscribe links in them, at the end or bottom of each newsletter email you receive from us. For detailed instructions on how to unsubscribe, please visit our Newsletters Help.

Automatically Collected Information

We automatically collect some information about your device when you visit trayaan.com. For example, we collect session data, operating system, web browser software, referring web site etc. These automatically collected information does not contain any personally identifiable information and it cannot be used to personally identify any individual.

What information do we collect automatically?

We collect information about your online activity, such as content viewed and pages visited on this website via analytics services such as Google Analytics. This automatically collected information includes, but is not limited to, your approximate location (for example, your city, state, or country), your web browser and its version (for example, Chrome or Firefox, with its version), your device category (for example, a desktop computer or mobile device), your device's operating system and its version (For example, Windows, Android or iOS), your internet service provider, the referring website (for example, the website, app, or search engine through which you reached trayaan.com), the session duration (how long you used this website), etc.

How do we use this automatically collected information and why is it collected?

We use automatically collected information to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics, and to detect and address abuse. We may use the usage statistics generated through this automatically collected information to customise our website for better user experience and make our website more user-friendly. We may use this information to understand our users, to know the reach of our website by knowing where our users come from (for example, from which country and state our users come from), to know how our users interact with our website, to detect and prevent any unnatural or fraudulent use of our website and to ensure safety to our users. We also use this information to try and detect any errors or glitches in our website or Service and to ensure that it is accessible and functioning smoothly on a wide range of devices, browsers and networks.

How do we collect this information?

trayaan.com, our service partners, third party vendors or services use "cookies" and identifiers to track and analyse your activity on our website for this purpose. Cookies are text files placed in your device through your web browser to store your preferences and to help us automatically collect information.

What else do we collect through cookies and identifiers?

We also use Google Analytics and their Advertising Features to help us better understand our users' demographics and interests so that we can improve user experience and deliver better services by understanding our users. If you wish to opt-out of the Google Analytics Advertising Features, please view the opt-out section below.

Are these automatically collected information anonymous?

The analytic reports generated by these Automatically Collected Information are completely anonymous and do not contain any personally identifiable information. It is not possible for us to identify any individual using these automatically collected information. For example, a user's device may be assigned a unique user I.D, which is a randomly generated number, to track their behaviour on our website, such as, pages visited, links clicked etc., but the analytical reports never contain any information about the users's name or I.P address. We do not track precise location via GPS or any other technologies.

However, the third-party vendors or services who provide us these analytical services, such as Google Analytics, may record your I.P. address to provide us these services, without revealing your I.P. addresses to us. Other third party services we use, including, but not limited to, such as Substack for providing you email newsletters and Disqus for comments and comment moderation tools, may also automatically collect some information about our users. We also authorise third-party ad technology providers to deliver personalised advertising to the users on our website. For more information about the third-party services we use and what information they collect, why they collect it, and their privacy policies and practices, please visit their privacy policy pages listed in the Third Party Services section below. For their opt-outs, please view the opt-out section below.

Do we merge automatically collected information with personally identifiable information?

We never try to merge automatically collected information with any personally identifiable information of any user, and we never try to identify any individual, unless it is unavoidably required for us to do so in the cases as explained in points number (i), (ii), and (iii) of (and excluding point number (iv) of), the Disclosure/Sharing of Information section below.


Third Party Services

We use third party vendors or services to host our website and its contents, and to provide you with services, functions, and features on our behalf including, but not limited to: a website and blogging platform, storage and delivery of web pages and content, email newsletters, commenting, feedback and contact forms, etc.

We authorise third-party vendors or services to collect information on our behalf for, including, but not limited to, analytics, necessities to operate this website and to optimise the delivery of its contents, provide secure connections and other features for our website to facilitate a better and safer experience for you on our website, and also to facilitate the delivery of online advertising tailored to your interests. Such information is Automatically Collected Information as explained in its section above.

For features and services such as email newsletters, commenting, feedback and contact forms, etc., for example, where it is necessary to collect personal information such as an email address, we authorise such third-party services to collect such personal information on our behalf for the purpose of providing you that feature or service. As already noted in our Personally identifiable information section above, such information can only be voluntarily provided by you yourself and it is not something that is collected without your knowledge or consent.

Third-party services may use cookies or other sorts of technology to deliver you their content or services or to facilitate analytics or reporting or use session-based cookies in case they provide you an account or sign-in services.

For a list of the third party services we use, please view the list below.

Third-party services we use

By using trayaan.com, any information submitted by you to these third-party services are subjected to their own respective terms of service and privacy policies and practices.

Their privacy policies, how they use your data, and how to opt out of their data collection for Online Behavioural Advertising, can be found in their respective websites:
  • We use Google products or services for, including, but not limited to, this website, blogging, content, and other services necessary to operate our website, and also for analytics and advertisements. See How Google uses data when you visit our site, which includes their advertising products, analytics tools, and other products used on this website.
  • We use Disqus to provide you a commenting feature. View Privacy Policy of Disqus. You are subject to their terms only when you use the commenting feature by clicking or tapping on the "Show Comments" or "View Comments" buttons or links.
  • We use Substack to provide you an email newsletter service. View Privacy Policy of Substack. You are subject to their terms only when you sign up to our newsletters powered by Substack.

For opt-outs, please view the opt-out section below.

Embedded Content

We may also use, on some pages, if not all, third party widgets or embedded contents, like for example, embedded content from social networking sites or services for embedding maps, pictures, videos, tweets, or posts. We may use such embedding services provided by Google Maps, YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram, for example. These embeds may be subject to their own terms of service and privacy policies and practices. If such services provide an option to opt out of tracking or any privacy features, such as Twitter which offers a do not track option and YouTube which offers a privacy-enhanced mode, then we may implement such privacy features provided by them. However, they may still use cookies for other purposes such as, for analytics or statistics or to provide functional or necessary platform features to the embeds.

Sharing to third-party services through our sharing tools

We provide sharing tools such as the sharing buttons to share links to our posts or content on external websites or social networks or services such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Pinterest, etc. By clicking or tapping on them, it may open the shareable content in those external services or produce shareable content to those external services, and you would be subject to their terms and privacy when you use our sharing tools to share to their services.

We encourage you to check the privacy policies and terms of use of any third party websites or services before providing personal information to them.

Personalised advertising on this website

Personalised advertising (formerly known as interest-based advertising) allows advertisers to target their campaigns according to the user's interests based on the sites they visit or the apps they use, providing an improved experience for users and advertisers alike. Ad technology providers (including Google and other ad networks and vendors), may collect, receive, and use personal data for the purposes of ads personalisation and measurement.

Ads for European Economic Area (EEA) users: A consent managing choice is provided to users in the European Economic Area (EEA). If you consent, your data will be shared with Google and, depending on the ads that serve, data may be shared with any of the commonly used ad technology providers. In the consent manager, using "Manage options" you may choose to allow/disallow particular options. If you do not consent, only non-personalised ads are shown. Although non-personalised ads don’t use cookies for ads personalisation, they do use cookies to allow for frequency capping, aggregated ad reporting, and to combat fraud and abuse.

For California users, an opt-out link is displayed at the bottom of each page, using which you may choose to opt out of personalised advertising. If you opt out, only non-personalised ads will be displayed to eligible users in applicable US states.

Other Opt-out options : To opt-out of all the Advertising Features and online behavioural advertising (or interest based advertising, personalised advertising, or any other terms used by different services which collect and use data to serve online advertising) please view the opt-out section below.


Opt-Outs

  • To opt out of personalised advertising by Google ads, you can visit Ads Settings.
  • To opt-out of the Google Analytics and their Advertising Features, you can visit their currently available opt-outs for the web.
  • To opt-out of targeted advertising (also called interest based advertising) by Disqus, visit their Opt Out Page.
  • Alternatively, to opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalised advertising, you can visit any of these Opt out services :
  • Browser Opt outs : Major web browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, for example, allow you to block third-party cookies. You can also clear any existing cookies from within your browser or set to be cleared automatically on exit. For more information, refer to the Help sections of your browsers. However, certain aspects of this website may not function properly if you choose to block cookies.

External Websites

trayaan.com contains links to external websites or third-party websites, which are not owned or controlled by trayaan.com. For example, by clicking on advertisements, social sharing links or buttons, or any other hyperlinks on this website that lead you to an external website or app which is not owned or controlled by us, you may leave our website and send information to a different website or application.

Those external websites do not operate under this Privacy Policy. We recommend that you examine the privacy statements posted on those external websites or third-party websites to understand their procedures for collecting, using, and disclosing personal information. trayaan.com is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites.

To determine whether a link leads to an external website, on your web browser, you can hover over that link, which displays the URL of that hyperlink in a tool-tip. On a mobile device or a mobile browser, for example, in Google Chrome on Android OS, pressing and holding on the link for a while will display the URL of that link. We may display a little icon beside external links, but we cannot guarantee that it always appears for all external links on this website. We recommend that you check the URL of the link before you click on it.


Disclosure/Sharing of Information

trayaan.com may disclose or share personally identifiable information to any third party without obtaining the prior consent of the User in the following limited circumstances: (i) To conform to the edicts of the law, or if required to do so by law or by any court or governmental agency or authority to disclose, for the purpose of verification of identity, or for the prevention, detection, investigation including cyber incidents, or for prosecution and punishment of offences. These disclosures are made in good faith and belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary for enforcing these Terms; for complying with the applicable laws and regulations. (ii) When we believe (in our sole discretion) it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding potentially illegal activities; to combat and prevent spam; to protect and defend the rights, property, or safety of trayaan.com, our site owners, users, visitors, customers, or others; and in connection with our Terms of Service and other agreements, (iii) Act under immediate circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of trayaan.com, the site, its owners, or the public, and (iv) In connection with a corporate transaction or a transfer of ownership, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, acquisition by another company or a group of individuals, or sale of all or part of our assets.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

trayaan.com may update this Privacy Policy in the future. We will notify about material changes to this Privacy Policy by placing a notice on our website. We encourage you to re-visit this policy page from time to time, to be updated of any changes.

Notify Us

If you have questions, complaints or comments about this privacy policy, please notify us through our Contact us page.