Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Hidden Bharat (“we”, “us”) operates www.hiddenbharat.com. For anything in this policy, including a request to see or delete your data, write to us at hello@hiddenbharat.com or see the contact page.

2. What we collect, and why

• Your name and email — from your Google account when you sign in. We use Google sign-in so we never handle or store a password.
• Your phone number — so we can contact you about a trip you book, including to arrange the ID check before your seat is confirmed, and so you can be added to your tribe's WhatsApp group if you ask for that. One account per number.
• Your city — so we know where you would be travelling from. Only our admins see it.
• Your birth year — only the year, never a full date of birth. We use it to confirm you are 18 or over, which is a hard requirement for every trip, and to describe a group's age range as a range.
• Your gender — optional. You can skip the question or choose “Prefer not to say”. Where you do answer, it only ever appears as part of a group total, such as “5 women · 3 men”.
• Your Instagram or LinkedIn — optional. If you add one, we may look at it if your profile needs a look from our team (see section 3). We store the handle or link you give us and nothing from the profile itself.
• Your vibe line — optional: one line about how you like to travel. Only our admins see it.
• Your vibe quiz answers — which tribe you matched and your answers to its five questions (and to the tie-breaker, if you were asked it).
• How you travel — on your profile form: whether you drink, early riser or night owl, budget, trip length, group preference, one question about your tribe and, for Water Sports, how comfortable you are in water. These exist to put you with people you will actually enjoy travelling with.
• Quiz progress counts — to see where people stop taking the vibe quiz, we count how far each quiz gets, including whether it reached the sign-in step, the result and a completed profile: a random number for that quiz, the step it reached and the hour — no account, answers or IP address. These counts are deleted after 90 days.
• “Check availability” and “Send to your group chat” counts — to see which trip dates people want, we count taps on those two buttons: which button, the trip date, a random number for that tap and the hour — no account, name, phone number or IP address, and nothing about who you shared it with. These counts are deleted after 90 days.
• Trip requests from before booking moved to WhatsApp — before that, you could ask to join a trip on the site. If you did, we keep which trip and where that request stood. Nothing new is added to it.
• That your ID was checked — only the fact, never the ID. See section 4.
• AI planner chats — if you're signed in, your planner chats (kept for 90 days after your last message, deletable any time), and a short summary of your durable travel preferences. See section 8.
• AI planner usage counts — to keep the planner's daily limits, we count how many plans, messages and conditions checks you use each day, against your account or, if you're signed out, a random ID kept in a cookie in your browser — never what you typed. Each day's counts are deleted after 30 days.
• Page-view statistics — we use Vercel Web Analytics to count visits to our pages in aggregate: which pages, the country, and the kind of device and browser. It sets no cookies and builds no personal profile of you. It never records the admin, sign-in or private upload pages, nor the details at the end of an address (except which date you looked at on a trip's page).

3. How we check your profile

Every profile goes through automatic checks, and we check ID before anyone travels. When you complete your profile, our system checks that you are 18 or over, that your mobile is a real-looking Indian mobile number not linked to another account, that your name looks like a name, that your vibe line stays about travel, and that any Instagram or LinkedIn you add is in the right form. If everything passes, you join your tribe straight away. If something needs a look, one of our admins reviews the profile — the details you give us, and the Instagram or LinkedIn profile if you share one — and approves you into a tribe, asks you to change something, or declines with a reason. A profile an admin has declined or sent back is always looked at again by an admin. You see the outcome on the profile page; we don't send a notification yet.

A checked profile means exactly that: the profile you sent passed these checks, or an admin reviewed it. It is not an ID check and it is not a background check. We may later remove a member from their tribe — for example if details turn out not to be genuine, or because of conduct on a trip. We record which admin did it, when and why; you can write to us at hello@hiddenbharat.com about it.

4. ID checks: checked, never stored

Your ID is checked only before you travel: before your seat on a trip is confirmed, one of our admins checks a government ID — in person, over video, or through the trip operator.

We never store your ID. No copy, no photo, no ID number and no details from the document. We record only that it was checked: the date, how it was checked, and which admin checked it. If an ID check is removed, we keep a record of when and by which admin. On your own profile you see “ID checked” and nothing more.

5. What other people can see

Your phone number, email address and social handles are never shown publicly, and never to other travellers. Only you and our admins can see them. In our admin tools your phone number appears in two places only: the record of trip requests from before booking moved to WhatsApp (so we can arrange an ID check, or reach you if a date is cancelled), and the WhatsApp list if you have opted in.

Public pages show nothing about who is going on a trip — a trip date shows only how many seats are left. Your quiz result, the state of your profile review and your ID check are visible only to you and our admins.

Posts inside a tribe are readable only by members of that tribe whose profile has been checked, and only admins can post.

Trip crews. If you join a date's crew, its other members (and our admins) see the first name you give when you join, your tribe, your intro if you add one, a Confirmed badge once your seat is confirmed, and the messages you write there. They never see your last name, photo, phone number, email or social profiles. Nothing in a crew is public: a trip's page shows only how many people are in each date's crew, and only once there are at least two. See section 12.

6. WhatsApp: booking and updates

Booking. “Check availability” opens WhatsApp — the app on a phone, WhatsApp Web on a computer — with a message to us already typed: the trip, the date and its address on our site. Nothing is sent until you press send. WhatsApp is run by WhatsApp (Meta) under its own privacy policy and terms, which cover everything you do there. When you message us we see your WhatsApp name, your number and what you write, and we use them only to answer you and arrange your trip.

Sharing a trip. “Send to your group chat” opens your phone's share menu, or WhatsApp with a message already typed (the trip, its dates and its address on our site) for you to pick the chat. We never see who you send it to or what you write.

Updates. WhatsApp updates are off by default. We only add you to a tribe's WhatsApp group or send you updates if you actively turn the setting on, and you can turn it off again at any time from your profile.

Every time you turn it on or off we record that change and its timestamp, so there is a clear record of what you agreed to and when. Dismissing the prompt with “Not now” is not consent and is not recorded as such.

7. Who else sees your data

We do not sell your data, and we do not use it for advertising. We share it only with the services we need to run the platform:

• Google — sign-in. Google tells us your name, email and profile picture; we tell Google nothing about your trips.
• Supabase — our database and login provider, where your account information is stored. An open crew page also keeps a live connection to it, to hear that something changed; no message travels that way.
• Vercel — hosting for the website itself, and its Web Analytics: aggregate, cookieless page-view statistics, with no personal profiles (see section 2).
• OpenAI — your planner messages and trip details when you use the planner, and any notes you add to the vibe quiz, read once and not kept. See section 8.
• Unsplash — some trip photos are shown straight from Unsplash's servers, as Unsplash requires, so your browser loads them from Unsplash. Like any site an image comes from, it sees your IP address and browser; we send it nothing about you.
• WhatsApp (Meta) — only if you message us there, for example to book a trip. See section 6.
• Titan (GoDaddy) — only if you email us: the hello@hiddenbharat.com mailbox, where we read and answer your message, is hosted by Titan (GoDaddy).

8. AI: the trip planner and quiz notes

When you chat with the planner, your messages are sent to OpenAI to generate replies and plans.

If you're signed in, we save your planner chats — the messages, the trip brief built from them, and any plans — so you can come back to them. Only you can read them: not other travellers, and not our admins. You can rename or delete any chat at any time, and deleting it removes its messages permanently. Chats are deleted automatically 90 days after your last message in them. We never share them.

If you're signed out, your chat is not saved on our servers — it stays in your browser tab and is gone when you close it (or saved to your account if you sign in).

We also keep a short summary of your durable travel preferences — the kind of trips you like, your budget range, regions you've planned — so the planner doesn't ask the same questions every time. It's filled in from the structured trip details, never from the wording of your messages, and it has no place for health information, religion, relationships, financial circumstances or anything similar: sensitive details are never saved to it. You can view, edit or clear it at any time from your profile.

Notes on the vibe quiz. You can add a short note to any quiz question and a final note at the end. They stay in your browser tab until you finish and sign in, then all of them are sent to OpenAI once, together, to write one personal line for your result.We keep that line and a few fixed tags (such as “offbeat” or “foodie”), never the notes themselves. Your tribe comes from the answers you tapped, not from the notes.

We never write the content of your messages or notes into our logs.

9. How long we keep it

• Your account — your name, email, checked profile, phone number, quiz answers, any trip requests from before booking moved to WhatsApp and saved plans: for as long as your account exists. If you ask us to delete your account, we remove all of it.
• A profile we didn't approve — if we ask you for changes or decline your profile and you don't send it in again, we delete everything you submitted with it (name, phone, city, birth year, gender, social links and vibe line) 90 days after that decision. Sending it in again starts a fresh review instead.
• The record that your ID was checked — the date, the method and the admin: for as long as your account exists. The ID itself is never stored, so there is nothing else to delete.
• Planner chats — deleted automatically 90 days after your last message in them, or whenever you delete them yourself.
• Trip crews — your intro and your messages in a crew: until you delete them or leave the crew, and at most 30 days after the trip ends, when everything in that crew is deleted. Our record of moderation in crews (what we did, why and when, never the text of a message): 180 days.
• WhatsApp consent changes — the log of when you turned updates on or off: for as long as your account exists, because its purpose is to evidence what you agreed to.
• Backups — we keep private backups of our database and photos so we can recover from a fault. Anything deleted, including a deleted account, can stay in those backups for up to 4 weeks; then it's deleted with them.

10. Your rights

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act you can ask us to show you the personal data we hold about you, correct anything that is wrong, or delete your account and its data. You can also withdraw consent for WhatsApp updates at any time without giving a reason.

You can change your WhatsApp setting, retake the quiz, edit or clear your travel preferences and delete saved plans from your profile, and delete planner chats from the planner. For anything else — including correcting details on a checked profile, or deleting your account — write to hello@hiddenbharat.com and we will respond within 30 days.

11. Children

Hidden Bharat is for adults only. You must be 18 or over to complete a profile, join a tribe or travel with us: we check it when your profile is checked, and a seat on a trip is confirmed only after that. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you believe we have, please contact us and we will delete it.

12. Trip crews

Every trip date has a crew: the people travelling, or thinking of travelling, on it. You can join once your profile has been checked. Joining is not booking — it doesn't hold a seat. Section 5 says what a crew's members see.

What we check. Before anything you write in a crew is posted — a message, your intro or your first name — it is checked automatically for phone numbers, email addresses, links, social handles, asking to move the conversation elsewhere, and abusive or explicit words. If it trips a check it isn't posted and isn't stored: we record only which check it tripped, in a queue our team reviews. No automatic check catches everything, which is why anyone can report a message or a person.

Reports and blocks. A report goes to our team only; the person reported isn't told who sent it. Blocking someone hides your messages and intros from each other in every crew — it doesn't change who is booked on a trip.

Moderation. Our team can remove a message or an intro, warn you, mute you in every crew for up to 90 days, or remove you from a crew. We record what we did, why, when and who did it, and a warning or a mute shows you the reason.

Deleting. You can delete any of your messages, and leaving a crew deletes your intro and all your messages in it. Everything in a crew is deleted 30 days after the trip ends; the chat itself turns read-only 7 days after it.

Counts. We count, per trip date, how many people join or leave a crew and how many messages and reports there are — never who, and never what was written.

Complaints. To complain about something in a crew or about a decision we made, write to hello@hiddenbharat.com with “Grievance” in the subject.

13. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of the page, and we will tell you directly about anything significant.