It's an early start for day one of the Inca Trail, the small bus picks me up and I meet the other three fellow trekkers - a girl from Holland and a couple from New Jersey. We pull over in Ollantaytambo to pick up some last minute supplies. A rumour seems to spread among the street vendors that we're on the lookout for walking sticks and pretty soon there's about eight of them extolling the virtues of their particular wooden stick. One vendor tries to sell a large painting of Machu Picchu despite that fact that we're evidently walking the Inca Trail for the next four days. He realises the joke, not before trying to show how his painting can roll-up, and gives up.

We also pick up our porters who will carry the tents and food on the trek. It's a tight squeeze as four tourists, a guide, a driver and six porters cram into a bus designed for eight. Soon the bus detours offroad running parallel to the railway upto the exciting sounding Km82 where the trail begins.

The Inca Trail is tightly regulated to avoid overcrowding, it is limited to 500 people a day including porters and guides. Passports are carefully checked at the gate and one Kiram Ganesh, aged 19, is allowed through.

The trail starts by crossing the fast flowing Urubamba river before following its course along the northern bank. We pass an "LSD tree," the flowers contain the chemical used in the drug. Bearing in mind we are regularly plied with coca tea (coca leaves, which are used to make cocaine, in hot water) I'll be looking for an "I Got High on the Inca Trail" T-shirt at the gift shop. It's pretty easy going as we stop for lunch, expertly prepared by the porters.

After lunch the trail leads into a new valley where the terraced ruins of Patallacta are visible. It was built in the 1400s for growing maize and later abandoned 100 years later when the canal dried up. It sits on a steep slope of the valley side, with spectacular views of snow-capped mountains in the background.

It's all going up later: the trail, my heart-rate and the price of water, which seems to go up one sole with each exasperated huff. The campsite at Huallabamba is attached to a village where the locals are drying dozens of varieties of corn on the tin rooftops and "persuading" donkeys up the hill with wooden sticks. Thankfully Maria, our guide, is more gentle with her encouragement.