Terms & Conditions

These Terms & Conditions cover the tours and related services provided by Mumbai Temple Darshan ("we", "us", "our") to you, our guest. They apply from the moment we confirm a booking, and they apply to everyone travelling on that booking.

They should be read together with our Booking & Payment Policy, Cancellation & Refund Policy, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Cookie Policy. Together those six documents are the whole of the agreement between us. Where a particular policy says something different from a general statement here, the particular policy is the one that applies.

The short "Booking Terms" printed on our packages page and on the back of your darshan ticket are a plain summary of these terms. They are correct but short; this document is the full version.

We may agree something different with you in writing for a particular booking — a custom itinerary, an unusual group size, a start time we do not normally offer. Where we do, that written agreement applies instead of these terms, for that booking only.

Tour, or journey

The package you have booked — the transport, the driver-guide's help, and the visits listed for that package.

Booking

A tour we have confirmed to you, identified by a pass number in the form MTD-XXX-0000-00.

Lead guest

The person who makes the booking. That person is our point of contact and is responsible for payment and for the accuracy of everyone's details.

Darshan

The act of viewing and offering prayers to a deity. It happens inside a temple, on terms set entirely by that temple.

Comfortable darshan

Our term for how we plan the day — the earliest start we can manage, a route built around aarti timings, the vehicle waiting between shrines, and help at the entrance. It describes comfort and planning. It is not a claim about queue length or priority. Clause 5 explains this fully.

Temple trust

The independent body that owns and runs a temple, sets its timings, and controls who enters and how.

Outstation tour

Our Shirdi and Pune (Dagdusheth Ganpati) journeys, which leave the Mumbai region.

To make a booking you must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into a contract under the Indian Contract Act, 1872.

If you book for other people, you confirm that you have their authority to do so, that the details you give us for them are accurate, and that you have told them these terms apply to them too. You are responsible for passing on what we send you — the confirmation, the ticket, the pickup time.

Guests under 18 must travel with a parent, guardian or another responsible adult on the same booking. We do not carry children travelling on their own.

We are a private tour operator. What you are buying is a road journey with knowledgeable assistance, arranged around the temples you want to visit. Every package includes:

• a private, air-conditioned vehicle for your party alone, never a shared bus or a pooled seat;
• a driver-guide who knows the route, the timings and the practical details;
• pickup and drop at your door — hotel, home, and by arrangement a railway station, the airport or the cruise terminal — anywhere in Mumbai, Thane or Navi Mumbai;
• all toll and parking charges on the route;
• bottled drinking water in the vehicle;
• prasad and offering assistance — guidance on what to offer, where to leave footwear, which counter to use;
• flexible timings — your start time, sequence and pace, planned around temple hours.

The temples, shrines and sightseeing stops included in each package, roughly how long it takes, and its price are set out on the packages pages and are part of your booking as confirmed.

What is not included, unless we have clearly agreed it in writing: temple entry or special darshan fees where a temple charges them, prasad, flowers and offerings, meals and refreshments, donations, personal expenses, travel insurance, and on outstation tours your lunch. Hotel stay is never included; we will book a room for you on request as a separate arrangement.

This is the clause most likely to matter to you, so it is stated plainly.

Specifically, and without exception:

• We do not provide, sell or arrange VIP darshan, priority entry, skip-the-queue access, fast-track entry or any kind of guaranteed or special access at any temple.
• We do not promise a maximum waiting time, and we will not give you one. Nobody can honestly predict a queue at a Mumbai temple on a given morning.
• We do not act as an agent for any temple trust, and we cannot get you an entry that the trust does not offer to the public.
• Where a temple runs its own paid darshan, pooja or aarti booking — for example the Shree Siddhivinayak trust's own pooja bookings, or the Shri Saibaba Sansthan Trust's darshan and aarti passes at Shirdi — those belong to the temple, and the temple sells them. We are glad to help you understand and book them on the temple's own website, but you buy them from the trust, on the trust's terms, and any refund of them is for the trust to decide.

What "comfortable darshan" means, and it is a real thing worth paying for, is this: we start early enough to reach the calmest hours after the doors open; we order the shrines around their aarti timings rather than around a map; the vehicle waits at each stop so there is no standing about between temples; the driver-guide handles parking, footwear and the offering counters; we use the lift instead of the steps for elderly guests where a temple has one; and before you book we tell you honestly what your chosen date is likely to be like. Tuesdays at Siddhivinayak, Angarki Chaturthi, Ganesh Chaturthi and Navratri are busy from before sunrise, and we say so rather than sell you a quiet morning that does not exist.

If anyone — including anyone claiming to speak for us — has told you that we can walk you past a queue, they were wrong, and you should tell us so that we can correct it. Nobody has our permission to say it, it does not bind us, and it is not part of your booking.

Other people's "priority passes" and "VIP darshan" for Mumbai temples are advertised all over the internet by agents who have nothing to do with us. They are not official temple products, we do not sell them, we get nothing from anyone who does, and we cannot say whether they are genuine. See the Disclaimer.

Mumbai Temple Darshan is an independent tour company. We are not connected to, sponsored by, backed by, licensed by or working for any temple, temple trust, religious institution, priest or religious authority, and nothing on our website or in our material should be read as saying otherwise.

We name temples and shrines — Shree Siddhivinayak, Shree Mahalakshmi, Shree MumbaDevi, Babulnath, ISKCON Juhu, the Sai Baba Samadhi Mandir at Shirdi, Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati at Pune and others — only to say truthfully where our tours go. Those names, and any logos or symbols that go with them, belong to their own trusts and we use them only to describe. We claim no right over them.

We do not collect donations for any temple. If you wish to donate, do it directly at the temple or through the trust's own official channel, and keep your receipt. Our driver-guide will show you where; they will not take your donation for you.

The full process, what is needed, and how a booking becomes confirmed are set out in the Booking & Payment Policy. In summary:

1. 7.1You tell us what you want — through the form on our website, on WhatsApp, or by telephone — ideally at least 24 hours before you wish to travel.
2. 7.2We confirm availability and the price, in writing on WhatsApp.
3. 7.3Your booking exists once we have confirmed it and issued a pass number. Submitting the website form or sending us a message is a request, not a booking.
4. 7.4Payment is due in full before the tour begins, by UPI or in cash.

All prices are in Indian Rupees and are quoted per person for a group of four or more. Our published fares run from ₹2,000 to ₹4,000 per person depending on the package.

• Fewer than four guests. The per-person fares do not apply. We will quote you separately, because a vehicle and driver for a day cost the same whether three people or six are in it.
• Seven to ten guests. A larger vehicle is arranged; the fare may change and we will tell you before you confirm.
• More than ten guests. We plan more than one vehicle and quote for the whole group together.
• Festival and peak dates. Rates may be higher on major festival days. Any such difference is stated in your quote before you confirm, never added afterwards.

A quoted price holds for the group size, date and package quoted. If the number of guests drops below the number the price was based on, the per-person fare may no longer apply and we will give you a fresh price before you travel — see clause 5 of the Cancellation & Refund Policy.

Prices for future bookings may change at any time. A change never affects a booking we have already confirmed.

Every itinerary we publish is a rough plan, not a timetable we promise. It is built on normal traffic and normal temple timings, and both change.

We may change the order of stops, the time spent at each, or put a similar shrine or landmark in place of another, where it makes sense to do so — because a temple has closed for a ritual, because a road is shut, because a procession has taken over a junction, or because your group would rather stay longer somewhere. Where we can, we discuss it with you first; where a decision has to be taken quickly, your driver-guide will take it and explain why.

We are not responsible for delays caused by traffic, crowds, weather, processions, VIP movement, road closures, diversions or a temple's own timings. These are ordinary parts of a day in Mumbai and are outside our control.

The times we give — around five to six hours for the half-day tour, a full day for the others, fourteen to sixteen hours door to door for Shirdi, about twelve for Pune — are honest estimates, not guarantees. If you have something fixed afterwards, a flight, a train or a ship, tell us when you book so that we can leave real spare time. See clause 10.

We collect you from and return you to the address you give us, within Mumbai, Thane or Navi Mumbai. Please give us the exact address with a landmark, and a number that will be answered on the morning of the tour.

• Be ready at the agreed time. Your driver will wait, and will call you.
• If we cannot reach you and you have not appeared within 45 minutes of the agreed pickup time, we may treat the booking as a no-show. The consequence is set out in the Cancellation & Refund Policy.
• If you are running late and tell us, we will do what we can, but a late start eats into the day and may mean a stop is dropped. It does not extend the tour.
• A pickup point you change on the morning may not be possible, and may change the price if it is much further away.

Airport, railway station and cruise terminal transfers are arranged on request. Where you are joining us from or returning to a fixed departure, we leave firm spare time — at least two hours before all-aboard for a cruise — and we will say so if your timing does not allow it. We cannot take responsibility for a missed flight, train or sailing, and we ask you not to book a tour that leaves no spare time at all. Clause 17 applies.

Vehicles are private and air-conditioned, kept in good condition, and run with the permits and insurance that the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and the state rules require. Drivers hold valid licences.

Some vehicles are our own and some come from transport partners we have checked and work with regularly. Either way, the booking is with us and we stay answerable to you for it.

We describe vehicles by type — a private air-conditioned car, or a larger vehicle for a bigger group — rather than by model. We do not promise a particular make, model, colour or registration number, and we may change the vehicle or the driver at any time, including on the morning, for reasons such as a breakdown or a driver falling ill. Any replacement will be of the same standard.

In the vehicle, please: wear the seat belt provided; do not smoke, drink alcohol or use any banned drug; do not eat anything likely to stain; and keep an eye on children at all times.

You are responsible for the cost of repairing damage you cause on purpose or through carelessness, and for professional cleaning where the vehicle is left dirtier than normal use would leave it. We will show you the actual cost and charge no more than that.

The driver may end the tour where a guest behaves in a way that breaks the law, or is abusive, threatening, or unsafe for the driver or other guests. Where that happens no refund is due, and we will explain the decision to you in writing if you ask.

A darshan tour works because everyone plays their part. As our guest you agree to:

• Dress modestly. Most temples require covered shoulders and knees. Shorts, sleeveless tops and short skirts are likely to be refused at the door — by the temple, not by us. Footwear comes off at every shrine, so wear something comfortable and easy.
• Follow each temple's own rules. Photography is not allowed inside many shrines. Mobile phones, cameras, leather items and bags may have to be left at a counter outside. Some areas are out of bounds. These rules belong to the temple, the temple's staff enforce them, and they change without notice.
• Behave respectfully towards the shrine, its staff, other devotees, your driver-guide and other guests.
• Look after your belongings. Bring only what you need, and leave valuables and good jewellery at your hotel.
• Stay with the group and keep to the timings agreed with your driver-guide. A long unplanned stop at one temple is time taken from the next.
• Tell us the truth when you book — the real number of guests, the real ages, anyone who needs help walking, any fixed deadline afterwards. We plan around what you tell us.
• Not ask us to do anything against the law, including trying to get into a temple in any way the trust does not allow.

Footwear, phones and bags left at a temple's own counter or cloakroom are left at your own risk, on that counter's terms. Things left in the vehicle are also at your own risk; the vehicle is not a locker. We are not responsible for loss, theft or damage to your belongings, except where our own carelessness caused it.

If a temple refuses a guest entry — for dress, for behaviour, for a rule the trust applies — that is the temple's decision. We will do what we reasonably can to help, but no refund is due. See clause 10 of the Cancellation & Refund Policy.

A temple day takes more physical effort than the word "tour" suggests: standing in queues, walking barefoot on stone that can be very hot by mid-morning, steps at some shrines, and long hours in a vehicle on outstation days.

• Make sure that everyone travelling is fit enough for the day you have booked, and tell us before you book about anyone who finds walking difficult, and about any medical condition, pregnancy, allergy or medicine that we should plan around. We would far rather rearrange the day than watch someone struggle through it.
• We do our best to look after elderly guests and guests who cannot walk far — a gentler pace, seating between shrines, the lift instead of the steps where a temple has one, the shortest walk from the vehicle. What we cannot do is change how a temple is built or how it lets people in.
• Bring enough of your own medicine, and keep it with you rather than leaving it in the vehicle.
• We carry a basic first-aid kit only. Our drivers and guides have no medical training and do not give medical care. In an emergency we will call for medical help and take you to the nearest hospital, and the cost of any treatment is yours.
• We strongly recommend travel and medical insurance for every guest, and especially for elderly guests and visitors from outside India. We do not provide insurance.

We may decline to carry, or to continue carrying, a guest whose condition on the day makes travel unsafe for them or for others. We will not do so lightly, and we will help you make other arrangements.

On request we will help with a special pooja or abhishek, floral offerings and prasad, an official temple darshan pass, a hotel room, or an additional stop such as Shani Shingnapur added to a Shirdi day. These are not included in the package price.

Where we arrange something that somebody else provides — a temple trust, a hotel, a priest, a caterer — we are only the one who arranges it. Their own terms apply, the service is theirs to deliver, and our responsibility goes no further than arranging it with reasonable care. We do not add any margin to official temple fees.

An added stop makes the day longer, and on an outstation tour may add a few hours. We will tell you both the cost and the extra time before you agree to it.

Cancelling, changing the date, changing your group size, and every situation in which money comes back to you are dealt with in the Cancellation & Refund Policy, which is part of these terms. The two rules guests most often need are:

• a cancellation more than 12 hours before your pickup time carries no charge;
• a cancellation within 12 hours is charged at 50%, and a no-show is not refundable.

Neither of us has broken these terms if something genuinely outside our control stops a tour from running, or from running as planned. That includes: a bandh, strike, protest, riot, curfew or public unrest; an order or ban from any authority; an epidemic or public-health measure; heavy monsoon rain, flooding, a cyclone or any other extreme weather; a road closure, diversion or highway blockage; a fire, accident or act of God; a temple closing or limiting entry for any reason of its own; and war or terrorism.

Where such an event affects your tour we will tell you as soon as we know, and we will offer you the choices set out in clause 7 of the Cancellation & Refund Policy — a new date, a part refund, or a full refund where nothing has been used. We will not leave you out of pocket for a day we could not give you, and we will not pay for other losses that follow from it, such as flights or hotels booked around it.

We will provide our services with reasonable care and skill, using drivers and guides we believe are capable, and vehicles that are fit for the road, permitted and insured. Where we fall short of that, we are responsible for putting it right.

Except for the paragraph below, and because what we owe has to be in line with what you have paid us:

• the most we can be made to pay for any booking is the amount you paid us for that booking;
• we are not responsible for losses that follow on from the problem rather than the problem itself — a missed flight, train or sailing, a hotel night wasted, an event missed, a day spoilt, or money lost in your business;
• we are not responsible for what somebody else does, fails to do, or gets wrong — a temple trust, a hotel, a restaurant, a priest, an airline, or whoever sells an official temple pass — whether you dealt with them yourself or we only arranged it for you;
• we are not responsible for loss, theft or damage to your belongings, except where we have been careless;
• we are not responsible for a temple's timings, closures, entry decisions, queue arrangements or fees.

Our vehicles carry the insurance the law requires for a passenger vehicle. That cover is not personal travel insurance and does not take its place.

We do not provide, and the package price does not include, travel insurance, medical insurance, personal accident cover or cover for your belongings. Arranging the right cover for yourself and everyone on your booking is your responsibility, and we recommend it strongly.

Tell your driver-guide at the time, if you can. Most problems are fixable within the hour, and almost nothing is fixable a week later.

If it cannot be sorted out on the day, raise it with us through the complaint route in clause 20. Please do it within 14 days of your tour, while the day is still fresh for everyone, and keep anything that helps — photographs, your ticket, the WhatsApp chat.

If something has gone wrong, tell us first and give us a chance to put it right. Most complaints are settled the same day on WhatsApp, and we would far rather fix a problem than argue about one.

How to raise a complaint

1. 20.1Message or call +91 89764 23389, or email contact@mumbaitempledarshan.com, with the word "Complaint" or "Grievance" in your message.
2. 20.2Tell us your pass number (printed on your darshan ticket, in the form MTD-XXX-0000-00), the date of travel, and what went wrong.
3. 20.3We will confirm within 48 hours that we have received your complaint, and give you a reference number for it.
4. 20.4We will look into it and give you our decision, in writing if you ask for it, within 30 days of receiving the complaint.

If you are not happy with our answer

You are free to take it further. Nothing in our policies takes away your right to go to a consumer forum under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, including the online portal of the National Consumer Helpline. For a complaint about how we have handled your personal data, you may take it to the Data Protection Board of India after first raising it with us, as the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 requires.

The text, design, itineraries, guides, ticket artwork, logo and layout of mumbaitempledarshan.com belong to us, or we use them with permission, and the Copyright Act, 1957 protects them. You are welcome to read, print and share our pages for your own personal use, and to link to them. You may not put them out again as your own, copy them or change them for business use, or use our name or logo as yours, without our written permission.

Several photographs on our website are free-to-use pictures of the temples and landmarks themselves, taken from Wikimedia Commons and credited to their photographers on the page where they appear, under the terms those photographers chose. Those terms belong to the photographers, not to us. The Disclaimer explains this and the illustrated video in more detail.

If you send us a photograph or a review, it stays yours. You give us permission to show it on our website and social media with your first name and city, and you can take that permission back at any time by telling us — we will remove it. We will never put up a guest's photograph or review without asking first.

We take payment by UPI or in cash, and by bank transfer where you ask. We will only ever ask you to pay to an account or UPI identity that we confirm to you from one of our three published numbers.

Before paying anything, check that you are dealing with one of the numbers published on our website. We are not responsible for money you send to someone pretending to be us, but we do want to know about it at once, so that we can warn other guests and report it. The full details are in clause 11 of the Booking & Payment Policy.

We try to keep the website correct and available, but we cannot promise that it will never go down or never carry a mistake. Prices, itineraries and availability may change, and a page may be out of date. What decides your booking is the confirmation we send you, not a page you read beforehand.

The website works offline, which means your browser keeps a copy of pages you have visited so that you can still read them without a connection. A page shown from that copy may be older than the live one, and a banner tells you when you are seeing a saved page. Always check a price or a timing with us before you depend on it.

Please do not try to tamper with the website, get into any part of it or our booking system without permission, send false enquiries, or use software to pull our content in bulk. Our staff booking system is private, and only our own people can use it.

We do business over WhatsApp, telephone and email, and you agree to that. A confirmation we send you on WhatsApp is a valid record of your booking, and counts in law as an electronic record under the Information Technology Act, 2000. Please keep it, along with your ticket and pass number, until after you travel.

Messages will go to the number you give us, so give us one you actually use, and tell us if it changes. We are not responsible if a message does not reach you because the number was wrong, the phone was off, or the message was blocked.

Anything formal you want to send us under these terms should go to contact@mumbaitempledarshan.com. For everyday matters, message +91 89764 23389 on WhatsApp.

How we handle your personal information — and the personal information of everyone travelling with you — is set out in the Privacy Policy. It forms part of these terms. Please read at least clause 3 of it, which covers your responsibility when you give us details of other people in your group.

We may update these terms from time to time. The version that applies to your booking is the one that was live on the day we confirmed it — a later change never reaches back to a booking we have already confirmed. The date of the last update is shown on this page.

• If one clause fails, the rest stand. If a court decides that any part of these terms is not valid, that part is taken out and everything else keeps working.
• Letting something go once does not give it up for good. If we do not insist on a term on one occasion, we may still insist on it later.
• These documents are the whole agreement. They replace any earlier statement, brochure, advertisement or conversation about the same thing. Our older printed brochure has been withdrawn and is not part of any booking.
• Nobody else gets rights under these terms. They are between you and us, and give no rights to anyone else apart from the guests travelling on your booking.
• Passing the booking on. You may not hand your booking to someone else without our agreement — tickets are valid only for the guest, date and journey printed on them. We may pass our rights and duties to whoever takes over the business, and your booking would still be honoured.

These terms, and any dispute that comes out of them or out of a tour, are decided under the laws of India.

We ask you to bring any dispute to us first, through the complaint route in clause 20, and to give us a real chance to sort it out. If it cannot be settled that way, the courts in Mumbai, Maharashtra will decide it.

Whichever of these documents your question is about, the fastest route to an answer is WhatsApp. We answer messages every day of the week, and usually within minutes.

Bookings and WhatsApp

+91 89764 23389

Tours and support

+91 79001 77209 · +91 90041 04537

Email

contact@mumbaitempledarshan.com

Website

mumbaitempledarshan.com

Hours

Tours daily 5:00 AM – 9:00 PM · WhatsApp answered every day

Where we operate

Mumbai · Thane · Navi Mumbai — and outstation to Shirdi and Pune

We are a small operator and we work from the road rather than a booking office, so there is no counter to visit — everything is arranged on WhatsApp, by telephone or by email. Anything formal you want to send us, including a notice under these documents, should go to contact@mumbaitempledarshan.com.