Reflections from the Inca trail

Reflections from the Inca trail

Why am I writing this?

I never thought I’d be the hippie writing about my world travels but here I am writing a reflection post on my recent trip to Peru. Oh well. I went, I saw, I hiked. I learned things along the way. If this encourages you to take an awesome trip, reflect more on your day-to-day, or even if it just entertains you for a few minutes, I’ll consider it mission accomplished. Hopefully, this resonates with you.

Where’d I go?

The Inca Trail is one of the most famous treks in South America and is widely rated as one the top treks in the world. Over the course of 43 kilometers (~26 miles), you see a variety of climates: dry and snow-capped mountain sceneries, cloud-forests, subtropical jungles and a dazzling array of Inca paving stones, steps, and ruins. The culmination of the trail is the legendary “Lost City of the Incas”, Machu Picchu, a modern wonder of the world.

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Lessons learned

• Be grateful for what you have.
  • Across the trail, we saw an abundance of people – travelers, porters, families, adults, children, etc. There’s a term that has never escaped me since I first learned about it, sonder: “The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passed in the street, has a life as complex as one’s own, which they are constantly living despite one’s personal lack of awareness of it.” Every single interaction I had, for whatever reason, brought me back to this same thought along the trail. My general theory is that it’s because I was witnessing an incredible social/cultural/racial melting pot in terms of people on the trail and also because the experience of life that I was observing on the trail was so vastly different than my own. During each interaction, I couldn’t help but think how fortunate I was to have been born in the States and living in a developed economy. I was on the trail for an annual vacation while others were there for a multitude of reasons. Athletes there to challenge themselves physically, travelers there to explore new territories, porters there make money for their families, children there simply because they were born into a farmer family, etc. My day-to-day as well as well as my trajectory of life was so starkly different due to so many reasons outside of my control – blind luck. Porters did this insanely difficult job in order to provide education for their children’s so they didn’t have to be porters in the future. Elderly women raced up the mountain to beat us to the peak just so they could sell goods they just carried from the bottom in order to make money. Some travelers made it look like the easiest hike of their life while others were struggling with every breath. The diversity of life was remarkable and it reminded me to keep it all in perspective and be grateful for what I have.
• Sometimes not giving yourself an out unlocks potential.
  • At the end of the hike, we got shirts that read “I survived the Inca trail” and I joked to the rest of the group my shirt should’ve read “I would’ve quit if I had the option”. While I was kidding (half), it got me thinking, there were some serious low points of the hike for me. Granted, I got food poisoning which amplified the worst parts of the hike but I asked myself if I had the option of leaving the trail to a clean bed, warm shower, and well-lit hotel room, would I have taken the out? That wasn’t an option, so the only route was forward – up and on. That got me thinking, how many times does that happen in normal day-to-day life? How often do I take the easy way out simply because it exists? Sometimes to unlock your best, it’s best to box yourself in. Don’t give yourself any other options. Barriers, often time, only exist mentally.
• Be present. life’s not always about getting to the finish line.
  • I think this is a result of being from the States – you’re constantly in a mindset of hustle & bustle. What’s next on the to-do list? Where to next? What’s the fastest/most efficient way to get this done? Often times, our group was focused on the next break point, peak, or resting point. We’d try to fly through the inclines to minimize the pain and often times forgot to just take a second to appreciate what we were hiking through. Sometimes, the only breaks we took were when one of us yelled “holy shit” and pointed towards what might’ve been the most incredible viewpoints we will ever see in our lifetimes. I did this four-day hike to soak it all in not to race through the trail. It was a good reminder that there’s more to life than just getting to the finish line. Enjoy the process. I’ve adopted an ideology that drives this point home – don’t focus on the peak you want to get to, focus on the climb you’ll enjoy most.
• Simply changing your environment doesn’t result in a clear mind. your thoughts travel with you – positive or negative.
  • Travel isn’t a cure-all for peace of mind. Disclaimer – This was the first trek/adventure part of a trip I’ve taken on a vacation so I assumed that I’d wander off into the mountains and come back with a clear head, a rock solid billion-dollar business idea and be refreshed. That couldn’t have been more false. While it’s great to get a change of scenery and some distractions from your day to day, your thoughts follow you – positive, negative, and everything in between. If anything, travel does one of two things: (1) it distracts you so you forget entirely about topics you were previously thinking about or (2) it gives you a lot time to break down topics you were previously thinking about – for better or worse. For someone like me, it was useful to have additional time free of distractions to unpack ideas and reflect on why certain ones kept popping up. Travel isn’t a cure-all but it can be an effective tool to break down things going on up top.
• “The journey is the destination”
  • This was our expedition company’s motto and as corny as it sounds, it couldn’t have been more accurate walking up to Machu Picchu. Don’t get me wrong, Machu Picchu is f*cking gorgeous. But as I was walking up to one of humanity’s spectacles, my only thoughts were about how happy I was that this was the culmination of four days’ worth of work and exploration vs. the simple fact that I was at one of the wonders of the world.
• Vacation isn’t meant to be perfect. embrace discomfort.
  • I remember reading in one of Yuval Noah Harari’s books that one surefire way to make someone care about something or love it is to suffer for it. At the time when I read it, I was like “WTF does that mean that’s awful advice”. Then I thought about – think sports, jobs/projects, school, etc. A lot of the most memorable or peak moments were usually after a period of suffering – prolonged hours exerting time, effort, and energy. One of my other good friends also said when he travels, his most memorable parts are when things go haywire and not according to plan. I don’t think I fully grasped that ideology until this trip where I had to force myself to hike while barely eating and sleeping. While I don’t plan on doing that again, I can definitely say it’s something I won’t forget and did make me appreciate the amount of effort I had to put forth in order to finish the task at hand. At the very least, discomfort = lifelong memories.
• “Going dark” won’t kill you. it’s not as bad as you think.
  • I’m on my phone just as much as anyone else and my buddies and I went into the trip knowing I was going to be “off the grid for 4 days” no Instagram, no texts, no emails, etc. Shit wasn’t half bad. Sure, you’d open up your phone every once in a while and instinctively pop open Instagram or check your texts but honestly not having access wasn’t the end of the world. Getting back to the real world wasn’t this crazy “I’m back” moment either. Yes, it’s great to get access to your friends and family again and nice to open your phone to a flurry of notifications of all that you missed but at the end of the day, the world, especially the technological world, goes on just fine without you. If you unplug from the Matrix, you’re not going to die. It’s actually quite refreshing and you remember how much headspace you waste on endless streams of nonsense.

Final thoughts

The Inca Trail was one of the most memorable things I’ve ever done in my life. If you’re thinking about doing it or something like it, I encourage you to dive in. You never know what you’ll end up seeing or learning about yourself…

And hopefully your payoff is as great as mine was. In true poetic fashion, the 24 hours prior to our arrival were incredibly dark and cloudy. As we made our final descent into Machu Picchu, the skies cleared up for one of the most epic views I’ve ever seen and, perhaps, will ever see.

*P.S. Shout out to my buddies Dave and Max for dealing with me for the entirety of our trip, our hiking group for being an awesome, diverse team to be a part of for 4 days, and the Alpaca Expeditions team for making our experience incredible.