One Day Inca Trail Tour to Machu Picchu from Cusco is the best alternative to the Classic Inca Trail and the Short Inca Trail. It takes you to both iconic ruins for which the Inca Trail is known for, Wiñay Wayna and Inti Punku (Sun Gate).
The Classic four days Inca Trail is undoubtedly an experience in itself. Recently, National Geography Travel Magazine recognised it as one of the best 25 treks in the world. This 500 years old trail that was built by Incas for the pilgrims to travel to Machu Picchu from Cusco.
It is on the bucket list of most travellers. However, to protect the trail, the local authorities have restricted accesses to a maximum of 500 people a day. This includes porters, guides and cooks, leaving just 200 spots a day for trekkers.
Mostly it gets sold out six to seven months in advance. Last minute bookers often browse for the best alternative to retrace Incas footsteps. For us, this is the one.
This one day hike to Machu Picchu requires no such advance booking. It is not popular yet so you will have most of the sites to yourself. You will also have most of the experience in a day. It takes you to two prominent Inca Cities – Wiñay Wayna and Inti Punku (Sun Gate) before stepping to Machu Picchu.
As for trekkers, even operators need permits and license to operate this tour. Treks in Cusco is one of the licensed tour operators for Inca Trail. As this is one of our signature treks, we have dedicated team of guides, chefs and porters for this.
Our guides are tourism professionals from Cusco. They have a wealth of knowledge and are fluent in English.
Please Note
Check out our detailed post on Inca Trail Packing List.
Cusco Hotel Transfer
0400 AM
At 0400 AM we will be picking you up from your hotel in Cusco. Then we will embark on a two and a half hours drive to Ollantaytambo. Here we will be boarding an expedition train to Km 104, the trail head. It will be an hour and 10 minutes train ride.
On this train journey, you will be enjoying the view of the Andean farmlands and villages.Upon reaching Km.104, we will have to clear the control. Your passport will be verified with the entrance ticket here.
We will begin the trek along the course of Urubamba river with a gradual climb to a popular Inca site, Wiñay Wayna. This is a renowned archaeological complex en-route to Machu Picchu on Inca Trail. Here our guide will give you a detailed tour and will share some insights about the place.
After this, we will stop for lunch at Wiñay Wayna campsite. The campsite has good facility. It has a dedicated area for lunch, has a toilet and facility to wash hands.
We will then hike to the iconic Sun Gate or Inti Punku. You will get the first view of Machu Picchu from here. This is beautiful and an exclusive view for this on Inca trail. From here, we will be hiking down the hill for an hour and will be arriving at Machu Picchu.
At the citadel of Machu Picchu, our guide will walk you through some prime sites like the plaza, temples, ceremonial centre among others.
After the tour, we will be taking a bus to Aguas Calientes town. It will be a 25 minutes drive. If desired, you may stop for dinner before boarding the train back.
At around 0600 PM we will be taking the train back to Ollantaytambo. Our representative will meet you at the train station and will transfer you back to Cusco.
Excellent Short Inca Trail to Machu Picchu! We are very glad after hiking the 1 day Inca Trail with our guide Carlos, he was very informative about his culture specially the tour of Machu Picchu citadel was great! Definitely we will recommend our relatives to book with Treks In Cusco that is 100% locally owned tour operator. Thanks for everything!!!!!
My daughter and I had to find another local operator in a rash after two days waiting for the confirmation of our booking and we we were told our booking could not be confirmed. Then we switched to Treks In Cusco, and our booking was confirmed immediately. Carlos contacted me immediately to collect our information required for the trip. It turned out that we had a great experience for our trip with Treks In Cusco.
Thanks for organising our 1 day trek to Machu Picchu! We had fantastic vacation and it was one of our best experiences; Carlos was our guide very knowledgeable. Basically everything was very well organised and definitely we will highly recommend this locally owned company.
Our guide told us the 90% of Inca trail operators are not Peruvians; therefore we feel so happy because we found Treks In Cusco. They were very professionals and friendly to help with everything.
We want to share, also our wonderful experience with Treks In Cusco!
My wife booked with months in advance, the 1 day inca trail to Machu Picchu with this local company. Likely the reviews that we have red is 100% true. Therefore, we want to add our experience that the company is direct and local operator, Thanks our guide and his team!.
Treks In Cusco is the best!
