Approaching the otherness: an incursion into the Andean culture

This paper is based on a practice exercise of the anthropological approach of the Otherness during my individual travel to Peru. From the I-tourist to the I-apprentice-anthropologist, this reflexive and self-referential exercise revealed to me the fascination of difference that Professor Vintilă Mihăilescu elaborated a decade ago (Mihăilescu, 2014). The pretext of this exercise was a trip I took in November 2023 to Peru – Cusco region, with the destination of Machu Picchu (UNESCO, 1983). By pre-setting the context of my anthropological exploration as one with: 1) the aim of practicing direct observation and participatory observation, 2) the fieldwork of the cultural area of Cusco, Peru and 3) the purposefulness of writing an ethnological journal, the following paper includes notes and stories that are based on the ethnographic photo-journal that I partially textualized here, as w