A Tinder profile or gap year isn't complete without a selfie overlooking the ruins at Machu Picchu. Now, it was my turn.
Incan ruins on top of Macchu Picchu
While others fantasised about Robbie Williams or appearing on Popstars, I was reading up on The Inca Trail and Machu Picchu, so added it to travel list at the tender age of 15.
Every year since I ticked off top entries (China, Japan, South East Asia), I've added it to my New Year's resolution list. This year was my year, I was making it happen. And it was the most incredible experience of my life.
I know that sounds trite, but what I experience up there exceeded all my expectations. Not just because the Incan city is a feat of human engineering, but because it's also a majestic paradise of divine proportions.
I didn't book anything before I arrived. I arrogantly assumed getting up there would be easy, as it's on eeeeveryone's bucket list. When I got there, other travellers mentioned you had to book six weeks in advance as they only allow a certain number of visitors a day.
I was shitting myself. I couldn't come all this way to do the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and not do it because everything was fully booked. How embarrassing and disappointing. I ventured into Cusco to find a travel agent. As you'd expect, they're 10 a penny and rabid for your custom.
Perhaps it's because it's out of season (I was there in May) I could choose what day I wanted to go up there. I was told by travellers and the internet that the hike isn't that great. The views from the train are far more spectacular, as the walk is through densely forested trails. It's also not the original trail, the Incan road is closed due to over-tourism.
It wasn't cheap. It cost me around £200, but this included:
- Taxi to and from the train station at Ollantaytambo
- Return ticket for Inca Rail from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes
- Guide from the station to the bus
- Bus to Machu Picchu
- Entrance fee (you need your actual passport to get in - photos or photocopies will be rejected)
This is the only way to get up the mountain if you don't fancy the four or one day hike
All the paperwork was dropped off in a brown envelope. And just like every country I've been to, it seems really disorganised but armed with WhatsApp, my travel agent was effortlessly on point for everything.
I got up at the ungodly hour of 3am as I was on the 5:30am train. I bumped into a girl I met the day before who was on the train before mine.
Inca Rail train at Ollantaytambo station
I used this time to read up about what I was going see. The travel agent told me the tour was an hour but I should stay later to walk around, he booked me on the 17:30 train back. I wondered what on earth I was going to do up there for six hours.
Complimentary biscuits and beverages on Inca Rail
The train journey is like an economy Orient Express. I got complimentary drinks (I still have the coaster - it's on my mantlepiece) and biscuits, but from seat 1A, I got the most spectacular views of Urubamba River as the sun was rising, snaking its way through the Andes, cutting through the mountain, guiding us to the pinnacle of our journey.
Aguas Callientes is your average stopover town. It has everything you need but with a transient feeling of doing just enough.
If it wasn't for the girl who came to meet me at the terminus, I would never have found my way across the bridge or realised what I needed to do to get onto one of the buses. This stage of my journey felt like the last days of Saigon, with a throng of confused people piling onto buses.
View from the bus going from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu
I can't even begin to describe the views from the bus as we drove around hairpin bends, climbing into the horizon, surrounded by a colossal mountain range.
At this stage, I knew I was going somewhere special. It felt like the walk through the winding canyons in the Wadi Rum towards the ancient city of Petra.
We reached the top, which really did feel like the last days of Saigon with the volume of buses. However, it didn't take long for my guide to find me. And luckily, the girl I met on the platform earlier was in my group.
Not going to lie, there is a short walk but it is steep. The guide was sensitive to this and stopped at every level to let us get back our thinning breath and tell us about the discovery of the ruins.
I found out that Macchu Picchu actually means small mountain and its sister - seen as the peak behind the ruins in the photos below - is called Huayna Picchu, big mountain.
The walk to the top is worth it. You come to the first viewing platform, where I was told off for using a selfie stick, not because they make you look like a knob, but because people have fallen down the mountain using them. For that reason, they're strictly forbidden.
The ruins were found by the American explorer, Hiram Bingham, in 1911. Until then, no one - not even the invading Spaniards - knew it was there, only the local Quechuas. He was searching for the lost city of Vilcabamba, which could be one of the two other known Incan sites here, but are completely inaccessible, reclaimed by the jungle.
There's also an on-going dispute, like the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, Yale University owns quite a lot of what Bingham found here and the Peruvians want it back. However, in Yale's defence, anthropologists are studying the bones, ceramics, artefacts and jewellery found here, you're not going to get better brains looking at it than the scientists and historians at Yale.
We normally refer to the Inca as a race of people, but we were told that the term Inca was used to describe nobility. Like we say aristocrats to describe the ruling toffs of the UK.
From the first terrace where you first lay eyes on the citadel, you walk up to a viewing building where everyone takes the same aerial shot selfie with the ruins in the background. Here's mine.
The reason everyone does it is because the views up there are breathtaking (literally and figuratively). Not for the ruins and the Incan foresight to perfectly position the food terraces for Instagram selfies, but the entire vista.
In true Inca fashion, they built this in the shape of one of their most sacred animals, the condor. From this point, you can make out the tail (the ceremonial baths, royal palace and temple nearest to me in the photo above), the body (the green space in between), the wings (the terraces either side) and the head (the sacred rock on the far end).
Majestic mountains framed the entire sight. Flares from the sun burst through the lusciously green rugged mountain range. Here I felt close to god. Not because we're 2,430 metres up, but because I was as close to creation and nirvana as I ever will be in my life. It reminded me of the importance of our environment and the Incans were right to centre their beliefs around Pachamama (mother earth).
We were then led down into the slave built city that used to be a seasonal stronghold for the Incan elites. The taxation system of three months free labour served the rulers well as I'm not sure people would voluntarily carry rocks from a quarry at the bottom of the mountain to top just for shits and giggles... Honestly, there's no strategic reason for this being here other than it's a nice location.
Two weeks before I arrived, a beer company was filming an ad in the cosmic room or inihuatana (hitching post to the sun). They dropped equipment on the sundial table, breaking the corner of it. So the Ministry of Culture has banned anyone from going into this room. This was something I was looking forward to as I wanted to understand the movements of the cosmos and see the view from here.
Principle temple with the sundial room in the background
This is Peru's Stonehenge, apparently during the solstices, the sun moves perfectly between the buildings. The ones to see are:
- Our guide spoke of Darwin, Niztche, ayahuasca ceremonies and spiritualism. Being up here, I totally understand why Incas may have built this citadel up here. It's a place for thought, contemplation and worship. I see it as a monastic building for meditation and spiritual enlightenment by the anointed to our great creator - the planet.
- From there, we walked through the citadel, which despite being a ruin, is oddly well preserved. As you can identify the parts really easily. The things to see are (in order of the path leading you through):
- Temple of The Sun/Royal Tomb (regimented row of buildings with gables)
- Ceremonial baths
- Royal Palace
- Sacred Plaza
- House of the High Priest
- Temple of Three Windows - exactly what it says on the tin
- Principle temple - see photo above
- Sacristy - huge tomb-like rocks where sacrifices were held behind the Sacred Plaza
- Inihuatana - from afar
- Central square - my name for the space making up the body of the condor in between the two sections of the citadel
- Three Doorways - again, they didn't use much imagination when naming these places
From there, we walked down to the sacred rock for the guide to wrapped up the tour and inform us that he's descended from Incan royals. After all the pontification of the evil's of the establishment and capitalism, he drops the bombshell he's one of them. Plus a plea for money to help with the study of his genetics in the Netherlands.
I touched the rock, as many people do, to feel the Earth's energy. The flat rock is shaped like the mountain range it sits in. The Incans believed this to be sacred as they saw it as the place Earth begins - from the ground up.
We're told we're around to walk around but there us only one way you can go and that's out. Even through this pathway, the views are emotive. This part of the citadel is where people lived and worked, it was the residential and industrial sector - even in times of reflection, people need to eat and make things, it's a long way down to go for slippers.
I originally planned to walk the 40-minute journey back to Aguas Calientes, but Susan and I decided to grab lunch along with a cop from Baton Rouge, Louisian, we met during the tour. So I bought a bus ticket for 200S and queued like a good Brit.
During the queue, bus journey and lunch, I learnt so much from my two companions. We talked about politics, morality, literature, our quest for answers and relationships. Our new cop friend asked if I read Orwell's 1984. It's one of my favourite books, I declared. His response was he knew I had as you can't have an intelligent conversation with someone who hasn't read it. Bless him, he doesn't know me very well.
I was happy I met two fab people to hang out with as I'm not sure what I'd do for four hours on my own in a town where nothing much exists.
It wasn't until my solo journey under a canopy of stars through the Sacred Valley I could reflect and drink in what I had just experienced. The problem with guided tours is your ushered from one place to another without being given the space to fully absorb or appreciate what you're seeing and experiencing.
Originally published 30 September 2019
