Essential Inca Trail

Hike the Peruvian Andes to discover the long-lost city of Machu Picchu

Pressed for time? This express version of our eight-day Inca Trail trip cuts through the same amazing Andean landscapes, but with some challenging longer trekking days and pre-dawn starts. Our goal is the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, one of the New Wonders of the World, and we’ll wake early on our visiting day to beat the day trippers from Cuzco. Better yet, we’ll be led by some of the most experienced guides on the trail, who will help unravel the mysteries of the Incas.

Please note: A permit is required to walk the Inca Trail. These are strictly limited and highly sought after; therefore, we strongly recommend booking early to avoid disappointment.

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 over 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.
• The free day in Cuzco is a good chance to visit Café Manos Unidas, the first vocational training site for young adults with disabilities in Cusco, creating employment opportunities for youth in their own community. In 2018, Exodus funded £5,000 where during the first three months of operation has directly benefitted 15 youths as well as 52 other community members indirectly.
• 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 re-usable 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 re-usable water bottle on this trip; filtered water will be provided where tap water is not drinkable.

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

Vaccination

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.

Eating and Drinking

All breakfasts, three lunches and three dinners are included.

Peruvian cuisine is loved for its flavors and originality; it’s well worth digging into the local delicacies. Among these are ceviche (seafood or fish marinated in lime juice), lomo saltado (a Peruvian take on a beef stir-fry), and various hearty soups including the delicious quinoa soup. Other dishes include roasted cuy (guinea pig) and alpaca steak. To drink, there’s pisco sour, the national beverage.

Drinking water is included throughout the holiday as the tap water in Peru is not safe to drink; boiled and filtered drinking water is provided on the trek; elsewhere your leader will buy large water containers from which you can refill your bottle.

Hotel breakfasts are normally simple buffet-style affairs, usually including bread/toast, preserves, cereal, sometimes eggs or cooked dishes, sometimes fruit, tea/coffee and fruit juice. Regrettably, we cannot guarantee that wheat-free or gluten-free products will be available for breakfast in all locations – if you have an intolerance you may wish to bring your own breakfast food.

Where lunch and dinner are not included in Cuzco, we’ll visit a variety of cafes and restaurants.

During the Inca Trail, hearty breakfasts are served and good-quality cooked lunches and dinners are provided. They usually consist of soup to start, a main course with meat/fish and some carbohydrates; followed by a dessert. Some snacks between meals are also provided. Tea/coffee is brought to your tent each morning and juice or hot drinks are provided with all meals during the trek.

Weather

The diverse geography of Peru results in a very varied climate between different regions. Cuzco and the Andes have a temperate climate. December to March is the rainy season in Cuzco/the Andes and 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 (20C/68F on average) but nights are lower (7C/44F), except for May, June, July and August when days are cooler and nights are often close to, or a few degrees below, freezing. In the Andes, however, anything is possible at any time of year, including cloud, rain or even snow, with rapid and unexpected changes.

Machu Picchu is in the cloud forest and experiences large amounts of precipitation all year as clouds move up from the Amazon Basin. Rain here can be heavy but is seldom prolonged. Cold fronts sometimes occur from July to August.

Peru is affected by El Niño weather phenomenon, where 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. A strong El Niño event occurred in 2014-16.

Is this trip for you?

This is a challenging trek rated Activity Level 5 (Challenging) – please refer to our Activity Level guidelines. 

This adventure is suited to proficient hikers. We embark on long treks, reaching a maximum altitude of 13,830ft (4,215m) and an average of 10,000ft (3,050m). We have one full free day in Cuzco (11,150ft/3,400m) acclimatising before starting the trek - please refer to the altitude warning within the Trip Notes. You may also find our Fitness Training Guide a useful reference.

There are early starts on this trek – which is all part of the fun – and you’ll need proper hiking equipment. This hike is rated challenging and is more difficult than our classic 8 day Inca Trail because of a shorter duration and therefore quicker pace. We have a much longer trek on Day 5 and a pre-dawn start on Day 6, walking the first half of Day 6 trek in the dark to reach the Sun Gate.  From the Sun Gate we enter Machu Picchu early in the morning to take advantage of fewer visitors, as we only have this one opportunity to visit Machu Picchu.

This trek has full porterage across the four hiking days. Due to the number of steep and uneven steps, this trek is not suitable if you have bad knees. Trekking poles will help to reduce the strain. 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.

Inca Trail regulations
There are several important Inca Trail regulations we would like to make you aware of:

1. Spaces on the Inca Trail are on a ‘first-come, first-served’ basis and we urge you to book as early as possible.
2. If you cancel your booking more than eight weeks before departure and wish to transfer your deposit to another departure or another trip the transfer fee is approximately £150 (US$210 / CA$252 / AU$308 / €191) as we will lose the permit we have purchased on your behalf. This is an amendment to our Booking Conditions. No transfers are possible within eight weeks of departure.
3. Bookings can only be made if we are supplied with your full name, passport details, date of birth and nationality, exactly as per the passport you will be using to travel to Peru (this information is used to purchase your Inca Trail permit). If your passport details do not match those on your permit, you will be refused entry to the Inca Trail by the local authorities.
4. Should the passport used to purchase your permit be lost, stolen or expire before your Inca Trail start date, you must purchase a new passport and notify Exodus immediately as we will need to apply to amend your Inca Trail permit. To do so, you must supply copies of both your old and new passports to Exodus in advance of travel and pay an administration fee of £25 (US$35 / CA$42 / AU$52 / €32). For this reason, we strongly recommend that you make a copy of your passport at the time of booking and keep it somewhere safe.
5. Please be aware that these regulations may change at any time, and Exodus is not responsible for the decisions made by Peruvian authorities.
6. There is a possibility the Peruvian authorities may increase the entrance fees to the Inca Trail, Machu Picchu and other major sights at any time. If they do so, we will inform you of this increase and the extra amount will need to be paid locally in cash in Peru.

Please note: While your departure date may be ‘Guaranteed’, your Inca Trail permit itself will initially be ‘On Request’. If you’re travelling within the current year, we will try to purchase your permit immediately upon receiving your booking. If travelling next year, we will apply for your permit as soon as they are released for sale. If we are unable to get your permit, we will contact you to discuss your options.

Regulations for visiting Machu Picchu
The main points impacting your Machu Picchu visit are the following:

• Machu Picchu entry tickets are valid only for one entry, which means you cannot leave the site and re-enter
• Once we have finished our one-way Machu Picchu guided tour circuit, we cannot walk back to view anything already visited and must exit the site.

Schedule of Machu Picchu visit on this itinerary (times noted are approximates):

• Arrive Sun Gate 7:30am and 8am
• Start the guided tour between 8:30am and 9am
• Leave Machu Picchu between 10.30am and 11am

Please see our COVID Travel Guide for Peru for more information on current guidelines for travel in Peru.

Additionally, 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.

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.