I Didn’t Make It to Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu, as Arif saw it.

Machu Picchu has been on my bucket list for decades, so when Arif received an invitation to speak in Lima, I decided to join him, and we added Cusco and Machu Picchu to the trip. The weeks leading up to our departure had been particularly stressful—between moving my mom and getting her settled, working on a new podcast project, and recovering from a persistent stomach bug—the trip couldn’t have come at a more needed time. “I’ll rest in Peru,” I texted my cousin. Knowing me well, she wrote back: “Doubt it, but it will replenish you and fill you with awe, and for you that’s far superior to rest.” 

I had been reading a book about awe before we left; how critical it is to our well-being and health, calming the nervous system, reducing inflammation, and triggering the release of oxytocin. The author Dacher Keltner defines it this way: “Awe is the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand.” I was really looking forward to being awed by one of the world’s great wonders.

But within a couple of hours of arriving in Cusco, I was in an ambulance being rushed to the hospital. I thought I was experiencing acute altitude sickness. Tests showed I had salmonella and a parasite. On an IV drip, oxygen, two antibiotics, and a cocktail of drugs to manage my symptoms, any hope of my making the Machu Picchu tour the next day was shattered. Arif stayed with me in the hospital that night. By early morning I insisted he go, no point in both of us missing out.

He reluctantly agreed and kept texting all day to check on me, highlighting the arduous journey and downplaying the experience to spare my feelings. I lay shivering under a pile of alpaca blankets in my hospital bed. The room had a picturesque wall-to-wall window—between sleep, I stared out at a sea of terracotta rooftops, undulating green hills, and a vast blue sky with whiffs of white. I asked the nurse about the statue on a distant hilltop, of a man with one arm outstretched looking toward the horizon. She explained it was Pachacuti, the emperor who transformed Cusco from a small kingdom into the vast Inca Empire; he is credited with building Machu Picchu in the 15th century. It was my tiny glimpse into the monumental moment that I was missing. 

But it wasn’t just the loss of this experience that I was mourning. I started questioning whether I could still handle the kind of adventurous travel that had been so much a part of who I am—covering stories in Kashmir on assignment, trekking through the Amazon with family. If I’m being honest, I had seen this trip as a way to reclaim the (pre-cancer) version of myself who reveled in adventure and going off the beaten path. Feeling miserable and fragile, I convinced myself the answer was no; and the tears started flowing.

Arif took this pic of baby alpacas from the back of the ambulance. (Yes, they’re real!)

Now, back home and a few days removed, when I reflect on this trip there’s one memory I keep turning to. The night before we left for Cusco, we had dinner with a few of Arif’s friends from the conference. As we ordered appetizers, Arif suggested we go around the table and share one thing we were looking forward to this year. Someone talked about their children getting married, another, an exciting new role. I mentioned my milestone birthday. As we turned to the lovely woman sitting next to me, she started tearing up. She explained that she had lost her daughter in a car accident while she was studying abroad in Australia. We sat in shock and silence. She let her tears flow. “Before I would have apologized for these tears,” she said. “But I don’t need to. They are an expression of my love.” She spoke about seeing her daughter in dreams, feeling her presence constantly. She told us how she had changed her profession and trained as a grief counselor so she could help others going through this unbearable loss. Her husband added story after story, with deep pride, of how his wife holds space for people during this time of anguish.

I sat in absolute awe. At this woman’s composure, resilience, strength, beauty, dignity, vulnerability, and honesty. I cannot imagine a deeper more cutting grief. To take the heaviest thing imaginable and turn it into a way of reaching toward others—that is beyond understanding. 

Awe, for me, lives in people and their stories. It always has. 

Machu Picchu has stood for centuries. It will keep standing. And I will be back, inshAllah. 

But that evening in Lima was singular. The people around that table, strangers just hours before, are with me still. The oxytocin released continues to fuel me.

If awe is to be in the presence of something vast that defies understanding, I found it. But not where I was initially looking.  

With love, and awe,

Salma

PS: I shared these words a few minutes ago with the couple to make sure it was ok to tell this story. They were deeply touched, and wrote: “Your words came to us just in the right moment … 26 months since our daughter transcended. No coincidence at all.”

Awe, abounds.