Guest post by James Sallee, whose Substack you can find here.
So you’re fat and you’re wondering if you can survive the 4-day, 3-night Inca Trail. The answer is yes. But do you want to thrive? It’s too late. If you’re reading this it’s because you’re praying someone will tell you “Don’t worry, it’s not actually that hard.” I know this because that’s exactly what I was doing leading up to my trip. I read so many Inca Trail diaries looking for a new nugget of information that would make it easier. If you’re reading this in the same boat, you’re in luck. I have advice that I had not read before I went. But you’re also out of luck. The trail is not easy.
I’ll start with my own experiences, and then I’ll have a packing list, some tips and tricks, and what I would do differently if I could go back and do it again for the first time. Learn from my mistakes.
I visited the Inca Trail in November of 2025, arriving at Machu Picchu on Thanksgiving day. There’s a spoiler for you there. I did make it. I survived. This is not being written from a convalescent hospital just outside of Cusco. I am home, and I am grateful I did the trip. But it could have gone better.
My wife Maggie and I ventured with GAdventures, and my experience needs to be specific to them, but my loose understanding is that the other companies are very similar. So take what you can use and keep your mind open that your own journey will be unique to you.
Planning The Trip
Arrive Early
If you have not already planned this trip, please for the love of God stay in Cusco for at least three days before you go on your hike. I read other places that said you would need one or two days to get acclimated. Maybe! But that wasn’t the case for us and I met quite a few people that also struggled with the altitude. So give yourself as much time as possible to get acclimated, and AT LEAST three days.
Prepare to be sick
I did not get sick sick on the trip, beyond feeling queasy from the altitude. But you probably will. You are not me. I was paranoid as hell about getting sick before our hike. I was skeptical that I’d be able to finish even at 100%. I sure as hell was not going to attempt it at less than full strength. Anecdotally, absolutely everyone I know in real life that has been to Peru has gotten sick. They all say “Oh my god, it’s so great. You have to go. I got sick, my brother got sick, my mom got sick, my boyfriend couldn’t see for three days, my uncle was screaming for Jesus as he lay on the bathroom tile. You have to go.” The reason is that Peru’s water is not drinkable for tourists, and lots of things are touched by water! Obviously there is the water itself, you have to drink bottled or filtered water. There’s also fruit and juice that are cleaned by water or made with water. Those will get you too. If you’re like me and don’t even brush your teeth with the local water, you may survive unscathed. But you are likely too confident for that. So do whatever you want, but bring some anti nausea medication, anti-diarrheals, and electrolyte powders to add to your bottled water. You’ll be glad you did.
Plan Your Meals
See above. Street food is not your friend if you’re prioritizing the Inca Trail. Eat at hotels or restaurants known for being tourist-friendly. Save the adventurous stuff for afterwards. Get some reservations.
Exercise!
Even if it’s too late to be comfortable on the Inca Trail, you can still help yourself out. Cardio will help with altitude, and lower-body strength training will help get you up all of those stairs. Take some long hikes wherever you live. I work out at least three times a week, but it was taking an 8 mile walk a few weeks before I did the trail that clued me in on how unprepared I was. I followed that first hike up with a few more to test out my pack, figure out how much weight I could comfortably carry on my shoulders, and make sure my shoes were broken in.
Day 1 of the Inca Trail
We both did not sleep well, because of the altitude and the stress. We had to be at the GAdventures office at 5 o’clock with our 6kg duffel bags. When I chose the hotel we would stay at in Cusco, I partly picked based on this early morning walk, but it still wasn’t close enough. With the altitude, sleep in my eyes, cortisol all up in my blood, I ran ragged to make the bus in time. Like is often the case when hurrying up, it was immediately followed by waiting. Our bags were weighed to make sure they were under the limit. If they were over, we would have to either ditch items or carry them in our pack. We settled in for a 90 minute drive to Ollantaytambo.
As the countryside got more and more rural it really sank in that we were far from home. It was hard to imagine what these lives were like that we were zipping by. I was still nervous but also grateful to finally be doing it. The sooner we started, the sooner it would be over.
Maybe not the most motivating mindset to have going into something that should be enjoyable, but I’m stuck with the brain that I have.
When we eventually disembarked, there was more waiting as officials perused our paperwork before allowing us to hit the trail. The trail begins next to a train station, in civilization, and was interesting for how unmonumental the trailhead appeared.
It stayed that way for quite awhile, our hike feeling more akin to trekking across a neighborhood of backyards to go hang out with friends.
Was Day 1 hard? Let me put it this way: Every day of the Inca Trail individually would be the hardest day of hiking I’ve ever done in my life. So yes, I did find Day 1 hard. I think the group I hiked with were roughly split 50-50 on whether they thought the day was difficult or fine, but nobody thought it was easy.
There are bathrooms along the way where you can pay a sol to use a real toilet, but very rarely did they have toilet paper. I brought two rolls of the squished camping toilet paper with me, that was plenty. It’s light enough that you want to carry more than you need. Fun bonus that you can also become someone’s saviour if you deem to spare a square.
GAdventures gave us a bag of snacks that was meant to last the entire journey. One of my hike mates gave his away almost instantly, not wanting to carry the extra weight. Maggie and I traded each other for our favorite things, but I ended up holding on to most of my snacks all the way through to the end. The truth is, food was never the top priority on my mind, being in fight or flight for most of the hike.
The food given to us by the porters was abundant. Every meal had multiple courses, and it wasn’t uncommon for one of us in the group to tap out before the meal was over and offer up what was left on their plates. It was tasty, too! Don’t worry about not having enough food.
Day 2 of the Inca Trail
Day 2 is known as the hardest day of the Inca Trail, and our guide reiterated the same. Every blog also said the same. The rest of the people in my group knew that, and when we were done and meeting random people on the rest of our travels, they would also say things like, “that second day is a killer, eh?”
Yes. It is a killer, eh.
It’s 4,000 feet of elevation gain in 6 hours. So climbing the empire state building 3 times.
I split this day into two parts on my Garmin watch because I had to stop and rest so long at the “market” which is roughly the halfway point. I call it the “market” because this spot, roughly 2,000 feet higher than when you start this day, is a wide open plain that has a few locals selling snacks, drinks, and various tools that a weary hiker might need. Maggie bought some super glue because her shoes were falling apart at the seams, literally. I bought a large bottle of water, and one of our group mates bought a bottle of gatorade that I would later end up with, I’ll get to it.
Our guide told us that the hard part, up, would take us about 6 hours total, with the market being about the halfway point.
Look at the last half mile in this screenshot from my Strava. It took me 45 minutes to climb the last half mile because the whole way was so steep and tiring.
This is what I looked like at the halfway point, when the temperature was roughly 60 degrees F. This is not water. My shirt is a Rorschach test. What do you see?
At the top of this picture, the lowest point in the mountain range is where you’re going over. That is Dead Woman’s Pass. We were told it would take us somewhere between 2 and 2.5 hours from the market. It took Maggie and I 2 hours and 15 minutes. Some folks in our party, it took them a little over an hour. I have no idea how. They had to wait for us up there, and I don’t care.
Here is the view once we got there, at roughly Noon. The white space in the photo is where the last one was taken from.
There were times on the way up to Dead Woman’s Pass where I would need to take breaks after 10 steps. The pattern I got into was using my pulse monitor on my watch to tell me when to break. When my HR got up to 160, I would stop. When it got down to 140, I would continue. It usually only took a few steps to get back up to 160. It was the longest two hours of my life. Maggie’s strategy was to take really tiny steps so no single step felt too daunting. When taking a step, her swing foot would travel roughly half the length of her plant foot. It was very slow, but it worked for her. I needed to forge ahead, as my tactic was more “sprint” and rest, though my sprints were other people’s rests.
Nobody gave us any guff for being the slowest ones. And if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered to us. We did it. The sky started opening up right before we got to the peak. We were given a minute or two to take pictures, and then we set off down the other side, only now it was pouring rain and the thousands of steps we would have to descend would be incredibly slippery. The people who had been waiting for us plowed on ahead, but I was feeling pretty beaten by the journey so far, and didn’t intend to meet my demise by taking the fast way down.
It took us about two hours to get down to camp from the peak, and we had the rest of the day off. We ate lunch, I fell asleep, and then I woke up for dinner still wishing I was asleep. I was happy to have finished, but still feeling really daunted by our next day, the longest distance hike of the entire trail.
Day 3 of the Inca Trail
The dishes that the porters can make on a hike like this are truly astounding.
Day 3 was also brutal, but was probably the most beautiful of the hike. Our guides said it is usually their favorite too. We pass four different ruins, all of which you can only see by taking the Inca Trail. Being on the other side of the mountain range, the climate changes too. Whereas the first two days were more temperate, and high up near Dead Woman’s Pass it is almost desert-like since not many plants can thrive at such high altitudes, Day 3 takes you into a rain forest.
You start the day off climbing, something we all were hoping we would never have to do again. It is of the same steepness as the day before, for about 90 minutes, and I was extremely stiff. Still, at this point in the trek you’re more machine than man, and knowing that you’ve done the most extreme part already, it is easier to put one foot in front of the other.
We did a lot of descending on Day 3 as well, and it was nice to switch it up.
Day 3 had its own steep parts.
Some llamas and ruins.
By Day 3 Maggie’s boots were trying their damndest to commit suicide, but folks in our tour group, our guides, and even guides from other groups kept resuscitating them.
We ended Day 3 around 6pm, because we would have to wake up extremely early for Day 4. It was not hard to fall asleep at 6pm, at least for me. Having said that, I did tend to wake up in the middle of the night almost every night. Having a Kindle with me to lull myself back to sleep was pretty clutch.
Day 4 of the Inca Trail
Day 4 was also brutal. Are you seeing a pattern here? We woke up at 3am because there are only two trains the porters can use to get home, and they are 12 hours apart. If they don’t make the early one, they walk on the tracks the entire way back. So we would need to be out of our tents so the porters could pack them up. It seems like an unnecessarily cruel system, but it kept us all from grumbling too much at how early we were awake. We hiked for maybe 10 minutes to the gates that enclose the area surrounding Machu Picchu. These would open at 5:30 am, so we had maybe 90 minutes to kill.
If you’re the first group there, you can sit on benches under a structure. We were just late enough that most of us were outside the structure, but the morning air was not too cold, and more importantly it was dry. I passed the time by reading my Kindle, some people went back to sleep. Maggie and I also munched on some bread and cheese the porters gave us for the day, which was meant to be our lunch. The cheese was out of this world, and we’ve been chasing that taste since. We think it may have been “Andean Cheese” but when we looked for that at grocery stores in Lima, what we found was a pale imitation. So the search continues.
Once the gates opened, we were in for another tough hike.
This is also where we encountered “The Gringo Killers.” You’ll see that phrase a lot as you read up on the Inca Trail. Some people refer to the descent after Dead Woman’s Pass as the Gringo Killers because as many hours as you may have spent on the stairmaster, you probably didn’t prepare to go down stairs for two hours. Hell on the knees. Other parts of the trail are pretty steep, and might injure a white person or two, but the real Gringo Killers are your very last hurdle before you get to the sun gate. This is not a wall, but it may as well be. Multiple guides were at the bottom of the stairs to help people navigate them. Their advice? Use your hands. I shimmied up them like a monkey on pure adrenaline, and felt amazing when I reached the top. After all of the stairs, all of the grueling hours, the hard sleep and the discomfort, the most fun I probably had was on these gringo killers. I felt like a kid again, and I also felt invincible.
We were very lucky and were able to see Machu Picchu from the sun gate. Our guide all but told us it wouldn’t happen, doubtless scarred by many prior disappointed tourists. But we made it, and the view was beautiful, if disappointing because it highlighted how much further we still had to walk.
It was about another hour of mostly downhill trails before we made it to Machu Picchu.
Our whole group, exhausted.
More than anything, we felt accomplished and relieved. We had done it.
Once we were actually at Machu Picchu, I was ready to pack it in. But we still had a two hour tour of the site coming from our guides.
I loved our guides, they were great people. But I could not give less of a shit about what they had to say at this point. After four days, Machu Picchu felt like the least impressive part of our trail. It was also absolutely covered in stairs, which felt so cruel at this point.
Of course Machu Picchu is covered with tourists. I was there, and I was a tourist. It is a very strange feeling to be walking around the ruins looking a bit worse for wear and seeing people who took the bus to get there walking up stairs with ease. You will feel like you earned your vista.
Eventually we all shuffled on to a bus and were taken to Aguas Calientes, a very pretty little town that is basically a waypoint for Machu Picchu tourism. There is a river running through the middle of it, and a train track that main street is built right up against. We had lunch at a restaurant, toasted with pisco sours, and whispered about how we would pool our tips for our two guides. We also got some free time before our train trip back to Cusco to explore the town and buy any souvenirs we wanted.
Shoutout to the Turkey Trotters!
Random Advice
Our guide always estimated how long it would take the slowest of us to make the trip, not the average. That meant folks were usually reaching a way point a good 30 minutes to an hour before he advised, depending on the leg. As one of the slower people, I took that to great heart. As slow as we went, we were always “on track” and planned for. We never kept anyone from a particular milestone.
If you can afford the weight, bring extras of things. Candy, toilet paper, tape. All of these things become goodwill tokens when you’re far from civilization on the back half of day 2 through the end. At one point on day three someone gave me a third of a bottle of Gatorade and it was like mana from heaven. It was a gift for giving her a few sols I had, as I brought a whole roll in case we wanted to purchase anything on day 2. As I said, food was far from the front of my mind, so I didn’t partake in the snacks (Snickers were a popular item) but that lady’s Gatorade was the greatest thing I ever tasted.
Packing
Absolutely essential:
Toilet paper – Most spots do not have any. Bring your own! Bring more than you need!
Sols – You will need them for bathrooms, and you will probably want them for buying snacks the first two days for the novelty of it. There isn’t anywhere to spend your sols on days 3 and 4 (until you get to Aguas Calientes) so don’t overdo it. I bought a roll of 20 and that was plenty for both me and Maggie.
Head lamp – If you need to use the bathroom at night, you will want this. We also hike in the dark on Day 4, and it is probably treacherous without a light.
Camp shoes – There is nothing better than taking off your hiking boots.
Wet wipes – I brought large wet wipes meant for “showers” and I’m glad I did. The porters do give you a bowl of hot water which can be used for bathing, but there isn’t really anywhere to do that gracefully. Maggie and I just used large wet wipes that were made for the purpose, and stowed them in ziplock bags we brought with us for garbage. Some people in our group used the hot water bowls as foot baths, which also seemed like a great idea.
Ear plugs – If you go with a large group, you’ll be sleeping fairly close to strangers with only the fibers of a tent obscuring whatever sounds they might make overnight.
Rain gear – November is near the beginning of the rainy season, but it rained every day on our hike. It was fairly consistent, opening up pretty hard around noon and then clearing up. It was a bit difficult to tell if the rain was “cover your bag” rain or full on “poncho over everything” rain, but having both options was nice. The poncho also doubled up as a tarp for sitting on wet ground when we needed to take a break.
Don’t Bother:
Water purification – The porters gave us plenty of water.
A ton of snacks – We overloaded on snacks and brought a ton back with us. The altitude did a number on our appetite, as it did for a lot of people in our group. Also the tour guides fed us a lot. We probably would have been fine with one snack a day for each of us. We had RX AM bars, I highly recommend the honey ones.
Candy – I thought bringing something fun to suck on might take my mind off of a grueling hike. You know what the last thing my body wanted while I was doing the hardest physical labor I had ever done in my life? A Jolly Rancher. I did give a few of them away, but most people felt the same way as me. Pass.
An extra camera – I brought along a little “Camp Camera” which is very lightweight and didn’t take up too much space. I thought I would need it to keep my phone off as much as possible. What I ended up doing was turning off my phone at night and keeping it on airplane mode during the day. I was still able to take pictures with it. At the end of the hike when we reached reception at Machu Picchu, I still had 50% battery left. There are no places to charge for the entire trek, but you won’t need to if you plan ahead.
Too many clothes – Everyone stinks, don’t worry about it.
Anything you “might” need – Weight is so much at a premium, I wish I brought less than I did. Every ounce adds up over the course of many hours hiking. Think minimally. One guy in our group had a 20L backpack and he was fine.
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