The Inca Trail in Comfort

Enjoy more inclusions and comfort as you hike to Machu Picchu

Take our ever-popular Inca Trail trek but with the added benefit of upgraded hotels throughout, a Sacred Valley tour and overnight stay, plus thoughtful camp extras. On trek, we have increased the personal weight limit versus our standard itinerary, allowing you to take more clothes and personal items for extra comfort around camp. We have also included your sleeping bag and a wider range of meals created by our camp chef. Our classic Inca Trail trip is designed to give you more time to enjoy the trail by arriving to Machu Picchu in the afternoon for iconic photos and overnight in Aguas Calientes. We return the next morning, fresh and well rested, for our in-depth tour of Machu Picchu and train back to Cuzco.

People, Places & Planet

We work hard to create trips that improve life for the people and places we visit and look after the planet we explore. Find out more about our sustainable travel ethos and practice here, and find out about the work of the Exodus Travels Foundation here.

Some sustainable travel highlights of this trip include:

People

How this trip helps improve life for local communities.

• The use of a local guide means our customers will be well informed about local traditions, and cultural and social sensitivities.
• This trip brings income and opportunity to the destination community through the inclusion of locally owned hotels and restaurants, the emphasis on eating locally produced food and support of other local enterprise.
• The porters we work with are not directly employed by our local partner, but we work with the same communities each year; they are fairly paid and we also supply uniforms, walking shoes and provide safe transport and community support for them. Our trek manager is a leading figure and consultant for the Porters’ Federation, which campaigns for the fair treatment of porters in the region.
• We’re passionate about the welfare of our punctilious porters. Alongside setting the golden standard for fair treatment, we’ve taken the next step with our pioneering Porter Project. In Peru, despite trekking the Inca Trail numerous times, most porters never have the opportunity to visit the stunning ancient ruins of Machu Picchu. We’ve taken the initiative to fix this and in 2018 started a project to ensure each of our porters has the opportunity to experience an important part of their own cultural heritage. We can now proudly say that more than 164 porters have been involved this project, and our mini-documentary Carried Away about our porters, has helped raise awareness of the awesome job these porters do.
• Funded by the Community Kickstart Project, our operator is working with Medlife to deliver emergency food parcels to the households of porters and other staff members who have continuously worked hard to guide our clients along the iconic Inca Trail.

Places

How this trip helps protect and conserve local landscapes and nature.

• By travelling in a small group, led by a local guide, we ‘tread lightly’ to minimise our impact on local resources and the environment.
• Trekking trips have little detrimental impact on the environment and our entry fees to the trail and historic sites contribute directly towards their maintenance and upkeep.
• We work with our partners on the ground to proactively eliminate or reduce waste, for example eliminating all single-use plastic water bottles and instead providing refills for reusable bottles.
• We operate a zero-impact policy on the Inca Trail removing all waste from campsites and separating it so that it can be easily recycled or composted. This ensures no rubbish or plastic is left behind in the places we visit.
• Our local operator has been certified and verified by Rainforest Alliance since 2015.
• Our Animal Welfare Policy ensures all our trips adhere to ABTA’s industry-leading animal welfare guidelines to ensure the best possible practices with regards to working animals and wildlife viewing.

Planet

How we seek to keep the carbon footprint of this trip low.

• Through our Planet Promise, we have pledged to halve the carbon footprint of our trips by 2030 and made rewilding and carbon compensation commitments for every customer who travels.
• Accommodation and restaurants in the itinerary use locally sourced food which has not been transported long distances.
• Vegetarian and vegan options are available at majority of accommodation and restaurants.

Tips for sustainable travel on this trip

• Leave no trace: We do all we can to ensure we leave no rubbish behind in the wild and beautiful places we visit; we ask that you do the same. If there are no recycling facilities in-country, we’d ask you to consider bringing recyclable materials home with you.
• Plastic waste reduction: Please bring your own reusable water bottle on this trip; filtered water will be provided where tap water is not drinkable.

Is this trip for you?

This trip is rated Activity Level 4 (Moderate & Challenging) – For more information on our trip gradings please visit the Activity Level Guidelines page. If you have any queries about the difficulty of the trip please do not hesitate to contact us.  

This trek is manageable for anyone in good health and fitness. However, it does have tougher stretches (in particular the ascent and descent of Dead Woman’s Pass) and we would not recommend it to anyone with no trekking experience. If you are not a regular walker, you should put in some physical preparation beforehand. The trek is also not suitable for those with bad knees, due to the number of steep and uneven steps, particularly on the third and fourth days of the trek.

Please note, it is essential you read the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu regulations in the Important Information section of the Trip Notes before you book this trip.

As this trip spends considerable time at altitude, we ask you to refer to the altitude warning within the Trip Notes. We spend one day in Cuzco (11,155ft/3,400m) and one in Ollantaytambo (9,186ft/2,800m) acclimatising before starting the trek.

Protest action/strikes are not uncommon in Peru, while these are generally peaceful, they can involve roadblocks and cause disruption to travel. Occasionally, your leader may have to adapt your itinerary in response to this.

Walking hours stated within the itinerary are given as approximates only. Timings stated include lunch and photo stops and will vary depending on the pace of your group.

Following a review of all our trips we have categorised this trip as generally not suitable for persons of reduced mobility. However if you are a regular traveller on such trips, please contact customer services to discuss the trip and your personal condition.

Vaccinations and Health

Peru

There are no required vaccinations. However, recommended vaccinations include tetanus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rabies, typhoid, tuberculosis and yellow fever. Additionally, Zika fever, a mosquito‐borne viral disease, is a known risk in Peru. There is currently no vaccine or prophylaxis available, so you should take the usual precautions to avoid mosquito bites. Please check all vaccination recommendations with your doctor or travel clinic.

Amazon: If you are travelling to the Tambopata reserve in the Amazon rainforest, the risk of malaria is slight, but you may wish to consult your doctor or travel clinic for further advice. We also strongly recommend that you obtain a yellow fever vaccination. Additionally, dengue fever and chikungunya are known risks in the Amazon region. Both are tropical viral diseases spread by daytime biting mosquitoes. There is currently no vaccine or prophylaxis available for either, and therefore the best form of prevention is to take the usual precautions to avoid mosquito bites.

Visa

Peru

Travellers from the UK, US and EU normally do not need a visa to enter Peru. Please note, visa requirements often change and it is your responsibility to obtain any required visas for this trip. Therefore, we recommend that you check with the nearest embassy or consulate of your chosen destination(s), including any countries you may be transiting or transferring through.

Some local governments provide guidance on what visas their citizens need. To help, we’ve gathered a selection of useful links below.

• Australia: www.smartraveller.gov.au/destinations/americas/peru
• Canada: www.travel.gc.ca/destinations/peru
• United Kingdom: www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/peru/entry-requirements
• USA: www.travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/International-Travel-Country-Information-Pages/Peru.html

Food & Drink

All breakfasts, four lunches and three dinners are included in the tour price (for those doing the Train Option: all breakfasts and three lunches are included).

Peruvian cuisine has a reputation for big flavours and originality. Local dishes include ceviche (seafood or fish marinated in lime juice), lomo saltado (a beef stir-fry) and various hearty soups, such as the delicious quinoa soup. Other dishes include roasted cuy (guinea pig), Alpaca steak, and, to drink, the national beverage: pisco sour.

In the hotels, breakfasts are normally buffet-style.

While on the trek itself, we also offer a more varied range of meals than on our standard Inca Trail itineraries to give that little extra comfort. For instance, substantial breakfasts including a cooked dish, a cooked lunch including soup or a starter followed by a hot main dish (usually with hot drinks), and a hearty three-course cooked dinner, are typical.

Drinking water is provided. The tap water in Peru is not safe to drink; boiled and filtered drinking water is provided on the trek and elsewhere your leader will buy large water containers for you to refill your bottle.

Weather

The diverse geography of Peru results in a very varied climate between different regions.

Cuzco and the Andes

December to March is the rainy season, while April to November is the dry season; characterised by clear skies and strong sunshine in the mornings, sometimes clouding over as the day progresses.

Daytime temperatures are usually pleasant (approximately 20C/68F on average) but nights are only 5C-10C (41F-50F), except for May to August when days are cooler and nights are around freezing point. In the Andes, anything is possible at any time of year, including cloud, rain or even snow, plus rapid and unexpected changes.

Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu

In the cloud forest, they experience large amounts of precipitation all year, as clouds move up from the Amazon Basin. Rain can be heavy, but seldom prolonged. Cold fronts sometimes occur from July to August.

Additionally, Peru is affected by the El Niño weather phenomenon, whereby the warming of Pacific Ocean surface water off South America drives a shift in the atmospheric circulation resulting in abnormally high levels of rainfall over parts of South America. These events occur at irregular intervals of two to seven years, and last nine months to two years.