"One hundred thousand pilgrims walk through the night at 4,700 metres, where the Pleiades meet a painted Christ"
Valle de Sinakara—Quyllurit'i
Ocongate, Cusco, Peru
Each year, fifty-eight days after Easter, approximately 100,000 people walk to the Sinakara Valley beneath the glacier of Ausangate. They come in eight regional 'nations,' accompanied by dance troupes whose costumes and masks encode centuries of Andean social memory. They come for the Pleiades, whose reappearance signals the harvest and the Andean new year. They come for the Taytacha — Christ's image on a rock. They do not distinguish between the two reasons. This is Quyllurit'i, the largest indigenous pilgrimage in the Americas.
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Quick Facts
Location
Ocongate, Cusco, Peru
Tradition
Site Type
Coordinates
-13.5697, -71.2303
Last Updated
Mar 9, 2026
Quyllurit'i merges pre-Christian Pleiades observation with Catholic pilgrimage centred on a miraculous image of Christ. UNESCO recognised the pilgrimage in 2011.
Origin Story
The Catholic narrative tells of Mariano Mayta, a shepherd boy who befriended a mysterious child near the rock at Sinakara in the late eighteenth century. When authorities tried to seize the child, they found only an image of Christ embedded in the rock, and Mariano died. The rock became the Taytacha — 'beloved father.' The Andean narrative is older and does not require this story: the valley was already a site of stellar observation where the Pleiades' reappearance was celebrated as the beginning of the agricultural year. The pilgrimage holds both accounts without requiring reconciliation.
Key Figures
Mariano Mayta
Shepherd boy at the centre of the Catholic origin narrative
Spiritual Lineage
Pre-Christian astronomical observation at Sinakara, syncretised with Catholic pilgrimage tradition in the late eighteenth century. Inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2011. The glacier ice collection by ukukus has been discontinued due to climate change, but the pilgrimage itself continues and grows.
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