An experience of a lifetime

By the grace of God, I just had the fortunate opportunity to perform the holy pilgrimage, also know as Hajj. Hajj is one of the 5 pillars of Islam and is the requirement of every healthy Muslim who can afford it. Unlike, some of the other trips that I have taken this year, Hajj is no vacation. It consists of a series of trials; from rituals, overwhelming crowds, to government complexities. However, there are no words that can describe the feeling of being able to pray in the sacred places (haraam) of Makkah and Medina and performing the pilgrimage.

Makkah is a situated on a valley between mountains. In the center of Makkah is the Kaabah, God’s house, where all Muslims around the world face for prayers. It is estimated that close to 1 million people can pray in this mosque. One of the largest challenges of the pilgrimage is dealing with the crowds. Makkah is a city that never sleeps, people roaming the streets at any time during the day, you can think of it as daytime New York City without subway systems.

This pilgrimage saw the largest crowd ever; most people estimate the attendance between 3-4 million. The majority of pilgrims are from Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Turkey. There are usually 1.6 million visa’s issued to international visitors; however, many locals attend every year too. This year saw the most important day of Hajj – Arafat occurring on Friday (jumaah) – the holiest day of the week, and deemed even more sacred. It is also known as Hajj Akbar.

To give you an idea of how crowded it was during the pilgrimage, consider the following:

• I am doing tawaaf (circling of the kabaa) and it is time for prayer. However, it is physically impossible to pray because there are too many people that you cannot perform the actions of prayer.
• To get a spot to pray inside the haraam in Makkah, you need to arrive 1-2 hours in advance. For Jumaah, you need to arrive 3 hours early.

For each trial that you encounter during Hajj, there are those golden moments that you will never forget:

• A father and son are changing into their ihram (clothing to be wore during Hajj) and the son drops his ihram into a puddle of water. The father takes his son’s ihram and wears it, giving his dry ihram to his son.
• A blind man performing tawaaf
• A man walking to stone the pillars representing Satan with both his legs amputated.

Hajj is one of the mostrewarding and challenging experiences of my life. Now that I am home and have had a chance to reflect, I can fully appreciate the tasks that I completed and the gratefulness of being able to arrive back safely. It has been an uplifting spiritual experience and hope to continue this momentum for the rest of my life. I hope to give some further insight into my experience in upcoming posts.