Mark Adams

American journalist and author whose Turn Right at Machu Picchu retraces Hiram Bingham's 1911 journey through the Peruvian Andes.

Mark Adams is an American journalist and author who has written for publications including New York magazine, GQ, and Outside. Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time (2011) was his first book and became a New York Times bestseller.

The book follows Adams — a self-described non-adventurous travel writer who has spent his career behind a desk — as he retraces the footsteps of Hiram Bingham III, the Yale professor who ‘discovered’ Machu Picchu in 1911. Adams’s journey, guided by a veteran Australian explorer named John Leivers, takes him through remote Andean villages, across high-altitude passes, and through the rugged terrain that connects Cusco to the citadel that Bingham made famous.

Adams weaves together his own physical misadventures with the historical account of Bingham’s expeditions and the ongoing controversy about whether Bingham ‘discovered’ Machu Picchu at all — or merely brought it to Western attention after the local Quechua people had known it for centuries.