Member-only story
Finding More Than Ruins on the Inca Trail
Confession time — my favorite part of hiking the Inca Trail wasn’t Machu Picchu.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a reason it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the people that voted it as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World knew what they were talking about. The scope of Machu Picchu is incredible, and having seen it in person through the fog of a rainy Friday morning, I can tell you that photos and videos simply can’t capture the expanse of the site. There’s no way to get a sense of the epic undertaking the Incas took in building it, nor is it possible to truly understand the remoteness of the location and the ruggedness of the terrain until you are surrounded by the jagged peaks of the Andes.
But I think the visitors that buy a ticket, take a bus to the top, and snap some classic photos are missing out on the entire point of the place.
We’ll never know if Machu Picchu was a research facility, a vacation home for the Inca emperor, a religious sanctuary, or — most likely — some combination of all three. But after walking the 45ish kilometers that make up the Inca Trail, it’s impossible not to see that the route was built as a pilgrimage.
