South America's only luxury sleeper train climbs out of the Sacred Valley and across the high Andean plateau to Puno on Lake Titicaca.
The route leaves Cusco and climbs almost immediately, threading through farming villages where llamas graze alongside the tracks and adobe houses give way to increasingly bare, high-altitude terrain. By the time you reach La Raya pass, you're above 4,300 metres — higher than most Alpine summits — with jagged brown peaks filling the windows and thin cold air that the pressurised carriages handle so smoothly you barely notice.
Meals are served in a dining car with white tablecloths and small lamps at every table, a genuinely incongruous dose of formality against the raw altiplano scenery sliding past outside. There's a piano bar carriage and an open-air observation car at the rear for photographs — worth braving the cold and thin air for, especially as the light goes gold in late afternoon.
The journey ends at Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the highest large navigable lake in the world, where reed islands built by the Uros people float just offshore — a possible extension if you have another day to spare before heading back toward Cusco or on to Bolivia.
The full one-way trip takes about ten hours, so pace yourself with the wine list and the altitude both — even seasoned travellers feel La Raya's thin air. Bring sunglasses; the plateau light at four thousand metres is fierce even through glass.
