Citadel In the Sky

IT’S HIGH NOON AND THE Inca Rail train that we boarded from Cusco, 80km away, has just pulled into Aguas Calientes. The dishevelled town, also known as Machu Picchu Pueblo, is a pitstop, which travel­lers frequent to catch a breath or rest for the night before starting their climb up the cloud forest that encloses the pre­cious Inca ruins. The frothy Urubamba knifes through the jumble of construc­tion that forms the town’s core, with towering blocks of emerald tropical for­est rising all around before disappearing beyond floating balls of cumulus.

Its stunning setting notwithstanding, Aguas Calientes has a feel of an unfin­ished settlement dotted with hurriedly built hotels with rebar and unfinished cement that could be easily taken down once the tourists finally leave. Like WH Auden had said, “one waterfall is ex­traordinarily like another”, it’s safe to say that one tourist town is extraordinarily like another. On the back of the hotels have arrived a mesh of small shops selling Inca-themed trinkets, textiles, alpaca wool sweaters and ‘authentic’ silver jewellery at prices suited to visitors with suburban American wallets; and crooked lanes upon lanes of restaurants offering whole roasted guinea pigs, a Peruvian delicacy, among the usual nikkei, chifa, burger-and-fries menus with the sweet Cusqueña beer to wash it all down. I stop for a moment to peer at a poster of a whole-cooked guinea pig dressed up in salad greens and mull if I should sample it for dinner later, but I’m unable to decide as its shiny orange body still looks too alive to be eaten.

Strolling about at an altitude of 2,040m in the Andes doesn’t feel discom­fiting after our acclimatising stop at Cusco, located at 3,400m a day before. Under an overcast sky that parted for sudden showers through the day, we drank tea with coca leaves and munched on yuca chips to put a lid on altitude sickness. A thriving city, with the tinkle of chatter and laughter round the corner through all hours of day and night, Cusco wears that distinct air of having been inhabited for centuries. With its intricate web of flamboyant Baroque façades, its main cathedral that stands on a sacred Inca site boasts of a 1,250kg silver altar, the Inca capital bears its bruises of Spanish conquest prominently, while remaining rebel­liously itself. People still make their way up all this distance to worship the Inti (sun) and Pachamama (mother earth).

While a view of the clear skies eluded us in Cusco, it revealed itself in all its glory from every corner of Aguas Calien­tes. Like a blanket of rich velvet studded with glitters, it spread over the sprightly town, which kept busy with a commu­nal volleyball match that even allowed the neighbourhood dogs a hearty play. I chuckled watching the quick, enthusias­tic bounce of a black Lhasa Apso taking a shot at the ball as the local kids cheered. Beyond the playground, life mostly seemed relaxed where children were allowed to run amok unaccompanied by adults, women pushed their infants in prams with mosquito nets over their carriages up the steep lanes, as did men behind their pushcarts laden with crates of bottles and sacks of potatoes along the town’s sharp slopes.

IN THE HALF light of dawn, we finish a quick breakfast before joining the serpentine queue for the bus that would drive us past hairpin bends up to the gates of the Inca citadel. We consid­ered hiking up the Inca trail that takes roughly five days to reach the ruins from Cusco, but settled for a trek up the Machu Picchu trail instead. The zero-emission bus is noisy with travellers from all over, their excitement brimming at 7 in the morning. Everyone seemed unequivocal in their preference to meet a sun-washed day over a rained-out one.

In 1911 when Hiram Bingham chanced upon the ruins with the help of Quechua locals, he wouldn’t have anticipated Machu Picchu’s potential to stun the world even a century later, espe­cially because no one knows exactly why (royal estate) and how (feat of human ingenuity) this citadel was built entirely with blocks of white granite almost 8,000m above sea level on a narrow pre­cipitous ridge of tropical forests without any use of modern tools, and abandoned merely 100 years later in the 16th century, most likely with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors and disease. At the entrance, a bunch of things such as selfie sticks, large backpacks, etc are listed as prohibited and yet we walk in without the guards even throwing so much as a glance at us. Chinese tourists waved their selfie sticks as they saun­tered past us in their groups.

As we made our way through the citadel, which has been considerably restored since its ‘discovery’, I noticed the unmistakable sense of symmetry that marks the complex as though it has emerged from the clean lines of an architect’s final draft. The (roofless) huts built with hunks of stones that fit snug­gly into each other like a well-worked puzzle about 2,000 years ago, didn’t look very different from our present-day ones. The typical room is ample-sized with one or two small windows and a low door. The living quarters stand on one side, while the terraced farming steps where maize and other crops were grown are laid out in a coup of perfect planning on the other. Llamas graze on this ancient site, where Incan royalty presumably climbed up to be close to the sun and worship it. Machu Picchu’s signature structure Intihuatana, or ‘the hitching post of the sun’, stands at its highest elevation carved out of a mas­sive slab of rock that historians estimate Inca priests may have used to study cos­mology, worship nature and predict the movements of the sun for indications of harvest season. It all seems surreal— to be standing in front of an ancient fortress, beholding this architectural marvel, trying to make sense of a people that have left little trace behind, leading us to bewildered guesses at best.

We started climbing Machu Picchu following the well-trodden trail built of stone steps, so steep and exacting that my knees wobbled after mounting the first flight. And there were only 1,600 steps to go. The two of us soldiered on— we climbed, greeted some other climb­ers, watched a few others struggle, huff and puff and eventually give up by taking refuge on the side of an un­named step from where one could only see the immense green expanse that surrounded us underneath eliciting the sense that we had crossed over the earthly boundaries of trees and forests and were headed straight for the skies, where waves of cloudy swell awaited our approach. My breath felt like blade in my side, my head weightless and it wouldn’t be absurd if I said that people might have similar experiences after downing shots of ayahuasca.

“Pretend to be happy,” grinned a man dressed like a site volunteer as I scrambled up to the summit with my knees reduced to jelly after two hours of steep-step ascent—I must have broken into a smile at the sheer relief of sighting flat land. Dangling thousands of metres above the Urubamba river, surrounded by swathes of deep jungle below and rows of mossy cliffs, mists rising from its deep, unseen belly, this well-worn morning view makes for a fitting place to greet the sun. I wonder if the Incas climbed this hill every day as part of their ritual and shudder at the thought of their superior agility.

THE TOWERING COLUMNS of green forest appeared before us layered one behind the other in shades of jade, juniper and pine, which dropped sheer on both sides into a verdant void. The sky above the most brilliant blue now, with the wind swishing, offered some respite from the oppressive humidity that had begun to grow as the day progressed. If climbing up the Machu Picchu trail was difficult, I hadn’t quite anticipated the ordeal that awaited us on our way back down. After what seemed like an endurance feat lasting another hour or so, a bit like the Incas had undertaken to build their estate, I found that I could finally cease my half-limp, half-crawl at the sight of a loafing llama. I had reached ground level, back in the city complex, where I could finally stop and stare at the rhythm of the terraced steps that lay lined with fresh grass. The sun had dimmed and the clouds held centre­stage. And there I set my eyes upon the Temple of Condor, a spectacular piece of imagination and Inca stonemasonry, as it stood unfurling its wings carved out of natural rock, with its head and neck feathers sculpted out on the floor. The condor signified the sky, cosmos and future for the Incas. Today, the Andean condor faces an existential threat. A civilisation built on the essential kinship between nature and humans, we can reckon how the Incas may have viewed our 21st-century rush to burn down the Amazon.

Fact File

Getting there: The road from India to Peru is a winding one—flights depart regularly from New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru to Lima with one or several layovers on the way and can take up to 30 hours or more to complete the journey.

Ideal time to visit: The dry season that extends between April and October is a good time to visit, although one might encounter occasional lashings of rain. Between June and August is when the crowds descend and isn’t ideal if one prefers a quieter time. December to March marks the wet season and is best avoided for adventurous travel.

Traveller’s tip: Peru offers an incredible array of diverse cuisine starting from homegrown ceviche to fusion Japanese nikkei and Chinese chifa. Whet that appetite with plenty of walk­ing to accommodate the generous portions that are served at most eateries.

Insider’s guide: About 40km from Cusco in the Sacred Valley, lies the Salineras de Maras (salt ponds of Maras). The terraced pools of mineral-laden water produce salt by evaporation, as they did when the Incas reigned, and is extracted once a month strictly by local community members. The salt-laden wells shining white in the afternoon sun make for some surprising sighting and learning about Incan ambition.

ArmasCuscoMachu PicchuMarasPerusalt pansTravel Issue 2023