Graham Earnshaw, A Sacred Valley (Travel 2019)

Earlier this year my partner and I travelled through South America and a highlight was spending a few days (too few really) visiting Peru and into the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. Unfortunately we were not able to do the Sacred Valley trek as it's closed in Feb for maintenance, so we took the beautiful hour and half train journey from stunning Ollantaytambo to Machu Picchu. We did the long arduous 2km climb up Montana (Mt) Machu Picchu in the morning. For the entire climb up, the mountain was completely covered in thick cloud and when we reached the top, for about 45mins we could only catch glimpses of the Sacred City below. Before we had to head back down, we did get lucky and the clouds dispersed to reveal the Sacred City in all its stunning glory. The 4 images I've chosen here from our visit to this sacred region are (1) a mountain peak across the valley from Montana Machu Picchu popped its head out from the thick clouds, with some sunshine also making an appearance to set off a glorious glow across the clouds; (2) a row of traditional Incan huts and store houses; (3) A Peruvian llama peers over the huge boulders at Machu Picchu; and (4) a beautiful rainbow beams across the Sacred Valley and Andean Mountain Range, with the Urubamba River flowing in the foreground.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.