The summit

We're woken at 5am with coca tea and a bowl of washing water. It's still dark and removing myself from the snug warmth of my sleeping bag feels like a terrible idea, so I stay bundled up, clutching my mug and sipping until I can face the dash to remove my thermals and don my trekking gear.

Gradually, sunlight slides over the mountains around us, casting an orange glow on the land. Over breakfast, we watch with anticipation it advances over the valley floor to our little table, and bask in the early morning heat when it reaches us. To our right is a little school, painted in bright red and attended by children from miles around - we are far from any village here - and behind us is the path we are due to take this morning, a track that climbs around the mountain and up to the highest point of the trek.

An encounter

We start out around 7am, immediately climbing and before long we're looking down on our campsite, hundreds of metres below. After an hour or two we run into the only people we will meet that day - a mother and her two children who are shepherds on this land. As we are battling the altitude, our lungs heaving with the unfamiliar strain, the two kids run around with no problem at all, leaving us with a mixture of admiration and shame at our apparent lack of fitness.

We ask the mother for permission to give our snacks - oranges and chocolate - to the children, who accept graciously and allow us to take their pictures. It is a moment I will not forget; a moment of pure, innocent humanity, out here beyond nowhere with nothing but the forbidding Andes to bear witness to our shy exchange of smiles and broken Spanish. I think of them still, am torn between feeling lucky to live in Europe and have so much, and a lonely kind of envy at their uncomplicated lifestyle and a fortune richer than any I could earn: waking up each morning to the untamed beauty of those mountains.

An offering to the goddess

As we approach the summit across a track of red sand, we stop to wait for the team and horses to catch up. This is a moment we want to share, and it's made all the more special by the joy of the Peruvians as we reach the top. It isn't just the three of us who are delighted to have reached this beautiful spot; the mule drivers and guides are excited too because it's a journey they seldom get to do, and rewards us with incredible views not only of the way we've come (we can see right to the mid morning stop on the previous day's trek), but also of the Veronica Glacier.

It's here that Elkin grants us an extraordinary privilege. Beside us on the ground are little piles of rocks that are, he says, where offerings to the gods are left. We each take a pinch of coca leaves from the tub he's carrying and he shows us how to offer them to Mount Veronica in exchange for safe passage across her lands. I am not religious, but in the shadow of this imposing example of Nature's power, it's easy to see why the Inca turned to her as an object of reverence and looked to her for protection. It's an undeniably special and spiritual moment that I am grateful to have experienced.

We slip our coca leaves between the stones and take another pinch to chew before beginning the descent. It's here that my camera runs out of battery, and I content myself with simply looking at the curves and edges of the scenery. An hour or so from camp we come across the bones of what I think is a sheep, stripped bare by scavengers and bleached in the sun. It's a reminder of the fact that here, life and death exist side by side, always cycling through one another.

Tonight, we camp in view of the glacier, on probably the flattest piece of land we've seen all day. It seems the sun has got to me: I'm feeling headachey and my stomach isn't happy. Nevertheless, I eat to keep my strength up and we are all asleep by 7.30pm.