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Issue 01 · Updated 12 May 2026

Fabrication audit

What we caught, state by state.

Why we publish this

Most travel sites don't publish their audit log. The reason is obvious: an audit log lists the things you almost got wrong. We publish ours because the catching is the actual moat. Anyone can write a destination page. The harder skill is recognising the listicle that confidently lists a hotel in the wrong town, the homestay that's been closed since 2022, the resort that turns out to share a name with a real property in the Philippines.

Roughly one in three numbers we research turns out to be wrong, dead, or moved. The work of catching that — and refusing to ship it — is the part of the job a generic AI travel planner can't do. The notes below are the receipts.

These are catches we know about. Every destination card carries a "Report a fabrication" link for the unknown unknowns — the ones we missed and you find first.

The audit so far

18
States closed
632
Stay candidates audited
92
Named fabrications caught
89
Honest-scarcity blanks

Current published corpus: 505 destinations · 2,180 verified eateries · 1,572 verified stay picks. What follows is what we caught before any of this got published.

By state

Sorted by fabrication-rate caught, highest first. A high rate isn't a state's failing — it's the listicle ecosystem's. It also means our audit on that state worked.

Tripura3 dests · 7 stay candidates
8 caught · 89%

Audit closed 3 May 2026 · 9 eateries audited · 5 fields left blank

  • —Welcomhotel ITC Pinewood Agartala — ITC Pinewood is in Pahalgam, Kashmir.
  • —Taj Pushpabanta Palace — signed May 2025, doesn't open until 2028.
  • —Ujjayanta Palace Heritage Hotel — Ujjayanta is the State Museum, not a hotel.
  • —Neermahal Palace Resort — Neermahal is a museum, not a resort.
  • —Agartala Fort View Guest House — listed under Neermahal, 53 km cross-destination.
  • —Unakoti Palace Heritage Resort — no such property exists.
  • —Melaghar Tourist Lodge — real name is Sagar Mahal Tourist Lodge.
  • —Kanyasree Guest House — no operational footprint.
Nagaland6 dests · 23 stay candidates
6 caught · 78%

Audit closed 3 May 2026 · 31 eateries audited · 1 fields left blank

  • —Dzukou Valley Resort / Tent Camp / Camps — fabricated, no listed operator.
  • —Hotel Japfu Mon — actually a Kohima property, wrong-district listing.
  • —Mon Travellers Lodge — no district-government accommodation match.
  • —Pfutsero Highland Resort — no operational footprint.
  • —Angh Valley Homestay — fabricated.
  • —Tripadvisor Pfutsero page was contaminated with Kohima cafés.
Jharkhand4 dests · 13 stay candidates
10 caught · 78%

Audit closed 28 Apr 2026 · 15 eateries audited · 0 fields left blank

  • —Most candidate stays in the original list could not be confirmed against any government accommodation registry. Survivors were the minority.
Meghalaya9 dests · 18 stay candidates
11 caught · 67%

Audit closed 3 May 2026 · 15 eateries audited · 18 fields left blank

  • —MTDC Tourist Lodge Mawphlang — MTDC is Maharashtra Tourism, not Meghalaya.
  • —Mawphlang Sacred Grove Resort / Forest Eco-Camp — fabricated.
  • —Cherrapunji loc had a Shnongpdeng homestay listed — 80 km wrong town.
  • —Cherrapunji xfactor had Mawlynnong Treehouse — 75 km wrong town.
  • —Mawlynnong loc had Kynrem Falls Resort — actually in Cherrapunji.
  • —Mawsynram had Shnongpdeng Resort + Cliff Cherrapunji + a Mawlynnong homestay listed — three different wrong towns.
  • —Shillong xfactor had Shnongpdeng Cave Lodge — 80 km away.
  • —Shnongpdeng xfactor had Nongkhnum Falls Camp — 100 km away.
  • —Cafe Cinnamon — listings exist only in Tokyo and Amritsar.
  • —Kebab Box — no listing.
  • —Maa-wah Restaurant — template ghost.
Arunachal Pradesh11 dests · 25 stay candidates
7 caught · 61%

Audit closed 28 Apr 2026 · 22 eateries audited · 6 fields left blank

  • —Seven cross-state contaminations caught — properties listed under Arunachal that resolved to neighbouring states' districts.
Manipur5 dests · 12 stay candidates
7 caught · 58%

Audit closed 3 May 2026 · 14 eateries audited · 8 fields left blank

  • —Hotel Imperial Moreh — listicle ghost, not on district government accommodation pages.
  • —Le Tropicana / Magnolia / Phangrei Crest — no operational footprint.
  • —Mount Everest Ukhrul / Shirui Inn — fabricated.
  • —The Imoinu — actually an Imphal restaurant misclassified as a stay.
  • —Karang island address corrected to Thanga island.
Assam8 dests · 22 stay candidates
8 caught · 36%

Audit closed 3 May 2026 · 18 eateries audited · 10 fields left blank

  • —Bonhomie Farm Guwahati — real place, but in Davao, Philippines. Nearly entered the corpus.
  • —Sivasagar Tank Resort / Assam Eco Lodge / Charaideo Heritage Farmstay — all fabricated (the last 30 km cross-destination).
  • —Majuli Island Inn / Heritage Homestay / River Camps — all fabricated.
  • —Tai Singpho — closed business, listicle still surfacing it.
  • —Cafe Hendrix — no 2024+ activity.
Mizoram4 dests · 12 stay candidates
10 caught · 17%

Audit closed 3 May 2026 · 11 eateries audited · 4 fields left blank

  • —Hotel Lengchhawn — full ghost, zero operational footprint, somehow already in the DB before audit.
  • —Aizawl Youth Hostel & Homestays (Zona House) — merged hallucination of two unrelated concepts.
  • —Hotel Sangchia / Zote Bakery 'in Champhai' — both actually in Aizawl.
  • —Blue Mountain Restaurant, L T Mizo Belly, Hmar Run, David's Kitchen Lunglei, Cafe Cira, Aizawl Coffee House — listicle ghosts ruled out.
Uttarakhand38 dests · 116 stay candidates
11 caught · 10%

Audit closed 3 May 2026 · 316 eateries audited · 1 fields left blank

  • —Hosteller Haridwar — fabricated.
  • —Fern Hillside Lansdowne — actually a Bhimtal property.
  • —Sattal Eco Huts — no operational footprint.
  • —Kafal Woodhouse Tungnath — actually in Pantwari.
  • —Swayambhu Tungnath — actually in Karnaprayag.
  • —Kumaon Almora / Binsar dup — same property under two destinations.
Himachal Pradesh32 dests · 116 stay candidates
10 caught · 9%

Audit closed 3 May 2026 · 286 eateries audited · 2 fields left blank

  • —Taragarh — actually a Palampur property.
  • —Tirthan Grand — actually in Banjar.
  • —Kailasha Kasol → Parvati dup.
  • —River-View-Mandi → actually in Barot.
  • —Apple Country — typo for Apple Valley.
  • —Maitreya Key — actually in Tabo.
Uttar Pradesh13 dests · 44 stay candidates
4 caught · 9%

Audit closed 29 Apr 2026 · 98 eateries audited · 0 fields left blank

  • —Hosteller Sarnath — fabricated.
  • —Dudhwa Sarai Homestay — no operational footprint.
  • —Teli Jungle Camp — fabricated.
  • —Brijwas Dham — address rewrite required, original was wrong.
Ladakh14 dests · 42 stay candidates
no fabrications

Audit closed 29 Apr 2026 · 93 eateries audited · 5 fields left blank

  • —4 Umlinga Pass nulls + 1 Tso Moriri duplicate left blank as honest scarcity.
Rajasthan23 dests · 70 stay candidates
no fabrications

Audit closed 29 Apr 2026 · 105 eateries audited · 4 fields left blank

  • —All 4 honest-scarcity blanks in Deeg — newer destination, thin verified footprint.
Jammu & Kashmir17 dests · 34 stay candidates
no fabrications

Audit closed 28 Apr 2026 · 98 eateries audited · 4 fields left blank

  • —3 Sinthan Top entries left blank (no operational infrastructure to verify), 1 Yusmarg deduplication.
Sikkim11 dests · 21 stay candidates
no fabrications

Audit closed 28 Apr 2026 · 19 eateries audited · 4 fields left blank

  • —4 restricted high-altitude lakes / national-park dests left blank — entry is itself restricted.
Bihar6 dests · 13 stay candidates
no fabrications

Audit closed 28 Apr 2026 · 36 eateries audited · 11 fields left blank

  • —Heavy honest-scarcity state — 11 fields left blank rather than filled from thin listicles.
Punjab + Haryana + Chandigarh8 dests · 24 stay candidates
no fabrications

Audit closed 28 Apr 2026 · 69 eateries audited · 2 fields left blank

  • —2 honest-scarcity blanks in Anandpur Sahib.
West Bengal6 dests · 20 stay candidates
no fabrications

Audit closed 28 Apr 2026 · 38 eateries audited · 4 fields left blank

  • —4 honest-scarcity blanks rather than fill from unverified listings.

Cross-state catches

The most readable proof of why we audit. A listicle confidently lists a property under one location; the property is somewhere else entirely, or somewhere else's tourism brand has been pasted over.

  • Bonhomie Farm Guwahati
    Real place — but in Davao, Philippines.
    Caught during Assam audit.
  • Welcomhotel ITC Pinewood Agartala
    ITC Pinewood is in Pahalgam, Kashmir.
    Caught during Tripura audit.
  • MTDC Tourist Lodge Mawphlang
    MTDC stands for Maharashtra Tourism — Meghalaya uses a different brand.
    Caught during Meghalaya audit.
  • Hotel Sangchia Champhai (Mizoram)
    Actually in Aizawl, the state capital — wrong town in the same state.
    Caught during Mizoram audit.
  • Hotel Japfu Mon (Nagaland)
    Actually in Kohima — wrong-district contamination.
    Caught during Nagaland audit.

What we changed in the data layer

Some failure modes get caught by an editor's eye. Others recur often enough that we've codified them into the database itself. These are the patterns that can no longer enter the corpus.

  • —
    Placeholder phone rejectionMigration 052
    A database trigger rejects any phone number containing XXXXX, runs of six or more zeros or nines, or strings like TBD/TODO/PLACEHOLDER. Applied to emergency_sos contacts so a stranded family can't be sent the wrong number at 2 a.m.
  • —
    Institutional anchor sources must be reachableUniversal-reachability rule, 2026-05-11
    Every cited source URL on the trust layer is curl-checked from a non-Indian environment before publishing. We dropped seven anchor rows that turned out to be India-IP-only — Wikipedia is never an acceptable primary source.
  • —
    Eateries price tiers are an enumCHECK constraint on local_eateries.price_range
    Eateries are tagged on a four-step rupee scale (₹ / ₹₹ / ₹₹₹ / ₹₹₹₹). Fabricated precision like 'between ₹150 and ₹350 per head' fails the constraint at write time.
  • —
    Stays must declare their sourcingdestination_stay_picks.source enum
    Every stay pick records whether it came from the verified local-stays index, an open web search, or a manual editor entry. The audit trail survives review.
  • —
    Editorial prose has a floordm_prose_floor CHECK constraint
    A destination flagged as worth visiting in a given month must justify it in at least 150 characters of why-to-go prose. Stub copy can't masquerade as a verdict.

Read alongside

This is the what. For the how, see our methodology page. For the why — and what a blank field on a destination card actually means — see why we say no data.

Spotted a fabrication we missed? Send the destination + the property name to hello@nakshiq.com or use the "Report a fabrication" link on any destination page. We re-verify against a primary source before publishing any correction.

See also: Editorial policy · Tourist traps · Corrections