In the early morning, the Q’eros enter Anccasi on their way to the annual festival of Q’oyllur riti at Mount Ausangate, the main apu for these indigenous people of southern Peru. They come through town in small groups and families, first heralded by the whimsical dancers and drum-and-pipe band that staggers hungry and slightly inebriated (they’ve been fasting for several days and feted in each village) down one pass and up to the next. They walk dozens of hours to reach the tent city at the base of the nevado Ausangate, a glacier that has been the site of Q’oyllur riti for hundreds of years.

We follow on foot and on horse, trying to keep up with the Q’eros, who seemingly surmount all the intervening mountain passes effortlessly despite their hunger, their sleeplessness, the great altitude and the searingly bright Andean sun. Filming intermittently, our crew captures their arrival at the festival. It is truly an astonishing sight to gaze upon the tent city after breaching the last pass and descending down the tiny well-worn path to the edge of the valley. There we hear the fireworks breaking the mountain silence and the tinny sounds of music caroming around the stalwart mountains and echoing up to us.

Below, we stumble into the marshy festival grounds where bands from nearly every village in southern Peru have converged in a cacophonous yet ecstatic celebration of the mountain and the Lord of Q’oyllur riti. As in most of Latin America, Christian and traditional beliefs collide here at Ausangate. For the Christians, Q’oyllur riti is the celebration of a young boy’s vision of the Virgin Mary in the snow. For the traditionals, like the Q’eros, the annual rite is a pilgrimage to the apu, where they give thanks for their fortunes and ask for the gods benevolence for the coming year.