We did it !! We saw Machu Pichu. Yippie.

Machu Pichu has always intrigued me from the time I read about it in the book ‘world famous unsolved mysteries’. Who built it? In what period? Why was it abandoned in perfect conditions? Why dint the Spanish find it even if its only 80 km from Cuzco? Did the Incas have alien help ? ( that’s a theory for most ancient monuments the construction of which baffles modern science) What was the purpose? Observatory? Citadel? Hideout? Recreational ? Why are there no stone engravings at the site? Is it the lost city of Incas (Henry Bingham who found it through a Quechua (the tribal language has become the common language of the Andean tribes) speaking boy was actually looking for the treasures of the lost city)? If the local population knew about it, why didn’t Peru do the excavations itself (maybe it was cursed?) ? Above all, once again the same question….a spectacularly grand city, lets say got abandoned due to a draught/famine, won’t the population go back after the problem years? Fortunately most of the questions do not get answered during the Machu Pichu visit and we can gleefully speculate on these questions.

Its the rainy season here (next time I should read carefully about what summer exactly means in places) and given our struggles at high altitudes we decided to chuck the Inca trail and go by train to Machu Pichu. We set camp at Aguas Calientes (a small strictly tourists only town at the foot of the Machu Pichu mountain) and left at 6 am the next day to do the supposedly 40 min hike on a zig-zag stone path.

It took us almost 2 hours and there it was …spectacularly beautiful clouds. As far as we could see there was no Machu Pichu only rain clouds. As the day progressed things cleared up quite nicely and I coaxed Niharika into climbing Wayna Pichu, the small hillock overlooking the ruins. Just as we made it up there and were settling on top of some of the ruins in the general direction everybody seemed to be sitting in, the skies cleared up completely and Machu Pichu revealed itself to us in all its grandeur.

About the ruins themselves: Scale – The Incas have carved/cajoled/coaxed/engineered the mountain itself to take care of their needs. Agricultural terraces (steps …filled with pebbles/sand/soil to create a stable cultivating surface) to take care of food, intricate network of aqua ducts carved in hard rock for irrigation, consumption and ritualistic purposes, religious temples (the condor temple (the bird is sort of the messenger of the mountain spirit and alternatively the mountain spirit itself could become a condor) and the sun temple (the primary god of the Incas), carved out of the mountain itself. The stones are almost hanging in thin air, their architectural style was to carve a large rock with many sides (there is a 32 angled rock) to act as a base and carve/fit other rocks on this rock at a slight incline….no adhesives of any form….stunning. Symmetry and proportion are the governing features. About the explanations of what exactly happened where…your guess is as good as mine. Its more interesting to form your own theories.

I guess I finally got what makes Machu Pichu one of the best sites to go to, the mystery, charm, architecture et all on side, the site makes you feel like an explorer, you are one who has found the site and its revealing its secrets to you, there can be thousands of people there, but the site is yours and yours alone to explore – Machu Pichu is yours.

Towards the afternoon as we began to leave, the clouds once again closed in on Machu Pichu, its charm and secrets hidden till the next set of explorers come in.

And here they are…the pictures what else!!

Tags: Inka, Machu Pichu, peru, The lost city of the Incas
Categories: Peru

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 8th, 2011 at 8:30 am and is filed under Peru. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.