We will take the Royal road through the Urubamba valley. Up the Dead Woman’s Pass at 4200 m braving scorching sun and freezing winds. Then through Phuyupatamarca, the town in the clouds down to Winay Wayna. And at dawn on the fourth day, we will find ourselves at Intipunku, the Sun Gate watching the sun rise over Neruda’s “shovel buried in the first sand”. Imagine that, I used to say, but some people as we all know lack imagination. And so we procrastinated until one fine evening when we ran into a brooding, very handsome Gael Garcia Bernal on a motorcycle trip across the continent, expounding on young Che’s Pan American dream. A week later, our tickets to Peru were booked and Inca trail reservations made. 

We flew into Lima and spent the day practicing our rudimentary Spanish on unsuspecting Peruvians who, true to stereotype were very friendly. A couple of hours before dawn, talking to my first victim Alberto, during the one hour taxi ride from the airport to Barranco where my friends were staying, as the smell of the sea assaulted my senses and the humidity became unbearable, the obvious comparisons did not spring to mind. Instead, this city by its night lights reminded me of Camus’s Oran, just substitute the French with the Spanish. Later, still quite early in the morning when the city was still half asleep, the yellow and white colonial buildings of Plaza de Armas, complete with ornate wooden balconies looked like they were transplanted from halfway across the world. I looked around for the ubiquitous Gaudi that one’s sure to find before I realized that this was Lima, not Barcelona. I was reminded of the first time I alighted a train at London’s Victoria Station. But, of course. I always knew there was a reason why Bombay CST, Howrah station and Chennai Central look the way they look; why they have so much character unlike the stations of North America, and why that’s how railway stations are supposed to look like. Colonial plazas apparently, are no different. 

We spent the afternoon at the National Museum of Peru. If you only have the time to visit one place in Lima, go to the National Museum. It is arguably the best museum that I have seen in the developing world, and there’s no better place to get a crash course on Peru’s history, and culture. From the Chavins to the Waris, from the Incas to the Fransciscan monks, from the condor and the puma to the Savior, from Caral pottery to the tiles imported from Seville - we felt educated enough to handle the country! 

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We landed in Cusco early the next morning. Because of the altitude, all flights in and out of Cusco are scheduled quite early in the morning. An hour’s plane ride from Lima, and we seemed to have landed in a completely different world altogether. Mountainous terrain, cool air, people looked indigenous though they all seemed to speak impeccable Spanish. Ooty, no, no this looks like Mettupalayam, I said until someone reminded me that the difference in altitude between Lima and Cusco was 3400 m. We were given coca tea as soon as reached the inn as the tea was supposed to help prevent altitude sickness. We all drank glassfuls and decided to smuggle the leaves back into the States.

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Cusco, the capital of the most powerful pre-Columbian empire in South America: the Incas, the worshippers of the Sun. Manco Capac is believed to have risen from the depths of the Lake Titicaca to build a kingdom for the Sun God. At its peak, the Inca empire extended from north of Columbia to the south of Argentina. The capital city of Cusco is believed to have been built in the shape of a puma. The Spanish arrived in the mid-sixteenth century, and after driving the Incas out of the land undertook the construction of a new colonial city on the foundations of the old Inca city. Glimpses of past glory remain today mostly in stone – in narrow cobblestone streets, and the interior of the Cathedrals which were once Sun Temples; cathedrals with very European façades and Christ at the altar, but the stone walls are a dead giveaway. But mostly now, Cusco is just another tourist town dotted with currency exchange booths and ceviche restaurants, street performers playing El Condor Pasa on the Andean flute, and entire families of indigenous people walking around the plaza, clad in traditional attire and speaking Quechua so that you will take a picture with them and pay them a dollar or two.  

Thanks to some very excellent pisco sours that I downed that night, I spent the next couple of days with some very dear salmonellae exploring the Sacred Valley and the ruins around Cusco while my friends walked the Camino Inka. I climbed the mountain of Pisac, made friends with the local artists and learnt some Quechua. I explored the ruins of Sascayhuaman (Satisfied Falcon) where Manco Inca was defeated, traced the teeth of the puma, and fumed at the incongruous statue of the Cristo Blanco (White Christ) looking over the city of Cusco like a giant Casper the ghost. I shared a cab ride with a French couple who nearly conned me into crossing the border with them into Bolivia, and spent some time in Ollantaytambo with a Texan who was happy to meet someone who’s been to a S&G concert in Chicago. And on the morning of the fourth day, after a peaceful night’s sleep at Aguas Calientas, I found myself at the entrance to the ruins of Machu Picchu, waiting for my friends to finish the trek.

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Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas that Hiram Bingham discovered in 1911 following a trail suggested by the locals. The purpose of this city is still unclear though the consensus is that it used to be some kind of a country retreat for nobles. The magnificence of Machu Picchu is not its architecture; one just has to look north to the Mayans to see how simplistic the Inca architecture is, but its location. High up in the Andes surrounded by dense forests and deep precipices, at an altitude of 2,350 m, here’s a city to tower over all other cities. Again, all’s that’s left today are stones, but what tales rock can tell! 

Neruda says and one cannot say it better: 

“Tall city of stones stacked up in steps,

at last a dwelling where what is earthly

was not hidden under slumbering clothes.

In you, like two parallel lines,

the cradle of lightning and humanity

rocking together in a thorny wind. 

Mother of stone, spume of the condors.

Highest reef of the human dawn.

Shovel buried in the first sand.”

(Veena travels, or rather she loves to travel. When she is not traveling, you can find her inside Excel cells dreaming of malabar fish curry)

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