Where the road ends
A truck can reach 3,600 metres and no further. Everything above this line is walked — 60 kilometres of it, over four to five days, to a citadel you cannot see yet.
TRAILHEAD · DAY 1 · NO PERMIT REQUIRED
A truck can reach 3,600 metres and no further. Everything above this line is walked — 60 kilometres of it, over four to five days, to a citadel you cannot see yet.
First camp, in a valley pinched between two glaciers. An afternoon spur climbs to Humantay Lake at 4,250 m — the acclimatisation walk disguised as the best view of the day.
Oxygen here is roughly 60% of sea level. The trail steepens into moraine and the glacier finally fills the windscreen. This is the stretch that decides how the day feels.
The high point of the trek, and 415 metres above anything on the Inca Trail. Above it stands Nevado Salkantay, 6,271 m — 1,641 metres of ice you walk beneath, never over.
The film above is the Salkantay valley from the air. On foot it takes four to ten days depending on the itinerary — and unlike the Inca Trail there is no daily quota, so you can book on the dates that suit you rather than whatever slot is left.