Public Story
Republik - Timelessroad
Timeless Road
The sun shines on this cracked road of mountains that hold the slow trail of humanity. This documentary journey crosses Cusco and the Sacred Valley in the highlands of Peru, the main artery of the Andean world. Ruins dating back to over 400 BC, pictographs, ceramics, pyramids, and ritual spaces surrounding the Inca kingdom's capital, are preserved as remote creations of ancient culture transformed by the Western world.In narrow alleys carved in stone, more than 60 thousand tourists stroll to celebrate the Inti Raimi, or the festival of the sun, which during June reveals a popular culture in syncretism with the colony. The foreign influence is combined with a mystical ecstasy among small towns. Hills are confused among thousands of people arriving in buses to the celebrations, while the smoke of the ¨ huatias¨, small clay ovens, gather families to prepare their food. The dancers take over the squares and temples with masks, whips, and brightly threaded costumes. The Peruvian highlands keep in their dances the sublimation of society's attitudes and ordinary facts in its different historical moments.That same eternal light remains in the architecture of the fortresses in the sacred valley. The dust is a brilliant mist in the territory that extends along the river and reflects the Via Lactea at night. Pascuala Quishpe (74) and her best friend Rosario Lupinta (73) drink chicha, an ancestral fermented corn drink, while at the top of the hill, a heart is formed by a couple walking in the Inca´s ruins. The Inca Trail or Qhapaq Ñan connects the timeless worlds of a Latin American Andean identity where the icy wind and the calming sun detach themselves from time and awaken a memory, our memory.
For Republik Magazine
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