24 JUN · CUSCO
Inti Raymi
The Festival of the Sun re-enacted at Sacsayhuamán — the Inca winter-solstice rite to Inti, the dry season's headline event.
01Editors' picks
All stops Where to point the camera, and your feet
Photos: Denisse Leon, Joe Green & Guiville / Unsplash
02How to plan
Three knots in the cord, tied in this order
- 01
Land soft, then lock the ticket
Give Cusco two nights — or drop straight to the lower Sacred Valley — before you climb higher. Then secure the timed-entry ticket and circuit: it's the slot everything else is built around.
- Hydrate; go easy on alcohol day one
- Pick your circuit, then your slot
- 02
Book the train, or the trek permit
No road reaches the site. It's PeruRail / IncaRail from Ollantaytambo, or you walk in — the classic Inca Trail permit cap is gone months out. Salkantay needs no permit.
- Dry season (May–Sep) sells out weeks ahead
- Inca Trail closes every February
- 03
Add the climbs you want
Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu Mountain are separate add-on permits, each tied to a circuit. Decide early — the peak permits sell out earliest of all, and never at the gate.
- First bus up ~05:30 from town
- Carry your passport — it's stamped
03Browse the guide
By the part of the journey you're sorting out
01 · 33 guides
Planning & Tickets
The official timed-entry system — which of the three circuits and ten routes sees the terraces, the Temple of the Sun, or the Inca Bridge.
Explore02 · 21 guides
Getting There
No road reaches the citadel. PeruRail vs IncaRail, the trek alternatives, and the bus up from Aguas Calientes.
Explore03 · 25 guides
Cusco Base
The Inca capital at 3,399 m, where you acclimatize before climbing anything — coca tea, the Coricancha, and where to sleep at altitude.
Explore04 · 25 guides
Sacred Valley
Ollantaytambo, Písac and the Maras–Moray salt and terrace sites — the lower, gentler valley where most trips stage.
Explore05 · 30 guides
Around the Site
Reading the citadel — the Guardhouse overlook, the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun and the Sun Gate, circuit by circuit.
Explore06 · 20 guides
Treks
Walking in instead of riding the rails — the classic Inca Trail and its permit, plus the Salkantay and Lares alternatives.
Explore07 · 27 guides
Itineraries
Ready-made routes that knot the trip together — from a tight two days to an unhurried week with the altitude ladder built in.
Explore08 · 34 guides
When to Go
Two Andean seasons, not four — dry-season clarity (May–Sep), the June–July peak and Inti Raymi, and the wet-season trade-offs.
Explore04Above the clouds · lore
The Inca wrote in knots
The Inca state ran without an alphabet. Accountants called khipukamayuq kept its records on the quipu (Quechua khipu, “knot”) — a primary cord hung with coloured, knotted pendant strings. The type and position of each knot encoded a number; colour and ply carried category.
Census, tribute, storehouse tallies, even calendars — an empire spanning the Andes, audited in cotton and wool. It is the perfect emblem for a planning guide, and it runs through this whole site: the divider, the hero ledger, and the mark in the tab are all knotted cords.
◷ The Inca origin
In the founding legend recorded by Spanish chroniclers, the ancestor Manco Cápac set out from Lake Titicaca with a golden staff, told to settle where it sank fully into the ground. It vanished at the hill of Huanacauri — and there the Inca founded Cusco, the “navel” from which four roads ran. Machu Picchu sat near the end of one such road, in the warm gorge feeding the cold highland capital.
⚑ Real, not invented
The tricolour across this guide is drawn from three true things: ichu-grass gold, the pale dry-season bunchgrass on the terraces; cloud-forest teal, the wet montane forest of the Urubamba gorge; and cochineal carmine, the Andean dye of highland weavings — not terracotta brick.
05What's on
Festivals worth timing the trip around
15–18 JUL · PAUCARTAMBO
Virgen del Carmen
Masked dancers fill the highland streets for four days around 16 July — one of Peru's most vivid Andean-Catholic fiestas.
FEB · INCA TRAIL
Trail closure
The classic Inca Trail closes the whole of February for maintenance and the heart of the rains — plan trains, not treks. The citadel itself stays open.