The short version
Once your place is booked it is held for you and nobody else can take it, so we do not cancel bookings or return payments. What we do instead is exchange: the full amount you paid becomes credit against any other teaching we offer, and you have twelve months to use it.
Please read the rest of this page before you book. If any of it does not work for you, write to us first — we would rather answer the question than have you find out afterwards.
Why there is no refund
A place on a course or a retreat is not a seat that can be resold the week before it starts. It is a place reserved specifically for you: teaching hours set aside, a group kept small on purpose, and in the case of residential training, a room held. When you book, we stop offering that place to anyone else. That is what your payment buys, and it is why the payment stays with us.
What you can do instead: exchange
You may exchange a booking for any other teaching we offer — a different course, a retreat, one-to-one sessions, online sessions or lifestyle coaching. Write to info@yogmandu.com before the booked dates begin and tell us what you would like to move to.
- Same price: a straight swap, with nothing further to pay.
- Costs more: you pay the difference.
- Costs less: nothing is returned as money. The full amount you paid is credited at our normal rates, so a cheaper choice simply buys you more of it.
An example, because the last point is the one people ask about
Round numbers, to show the arithmetic rather than to quote a price — our current prices are on the page for each course.
Suppose you paid USD 1,000 for a course and then cannot take it, and you exchange it for teaching that costs USD 400.
You do not receive USD 600 back. Your USD 1,000 buys that USD 400 of teaching and USD 600 of further teaching at our normal rates — one-to-one sessions, pranayama or meditation tuition, coaching, whatever you choose. Nothing you paid is lost. It is spent on teaching instead of being returned.
Twelve months to use it
Credit from an exchange must be used within twelve months of the date you originally booked. Exchanging does not restart the clock. After twelve months, unused credit lapses.
One exception, below: visa refusal and medical emergencies are not subject to this limit.
The teacher training deposit
Residential teacher training is booked with a deposit, with the balance due on arrival; the current amount is on the teacher training page. The deposit follows the same rule as everything else here: it is not returned, and it counts in full as credit toward another booking or another service.
Individual sessions
A booked one-to-one or online session can be moved to another date, or exchanged for different teaching of the same value, as long as you tell us before the session is due to start. A session you do not attend and did not tell us about has been used.
If you do not arrive
If you do not arrive for a course or retreat you have booked, nothing is refunded, but the amount you paid is still credit under the twelve-month rule above. Please write to us as soon as you know — not arriving without a word is the one thing that makes this harder than it needs to be.
Visa refusal and medical emergencies
If your visa is refused, or you or an immediate family member has a medical emergency, send us the written evidence — the refusal notice, or a letter from a doctor — and we will move you to a future intake of the same training. There is no time limit on this, and no fee for the change. The twelve-month rule does not apply.
This is not a refund. It is a place held for you until you are able to take it.
If we cancel
If we cancel a course or retreat for any reason, you may move to the next available dates or take a full refund of everything you have paid us, including the deposit. We cannot reimburse flights, visas or other travel costs, which is why we recommend travel insurance for any trip to Nepal.
In that case only, the refund is made by the same route the payment arrived, in the currency it was paid in. Bank transfer fees and any movement in the exchange rate between payment and refund are not ours to absorb.
Travel insurance
Because we do not refund bookings, travel insurance is the thing that covers you for what we cannot. If you are flying to Nepal, buy a policy that covers cancellation for the reasons that actually apply to you, and buy it when you book rather than later.
Questions
If something here does not cover your situation, write to info@yogmandu.com and ask before you book. We would rather talk about it than have you guess.