Friday, September 16, 2016

Hajj 2013, the journey to Jeddah.

This is a continuation of my Mini Series: Hajj. My last post was about me flying off to the UK for my Hajj preparation. Sorry this posts haven't got that many pictures. This is because I didn't want to document it in *that* way. Anyhow, here's the continuation......

My flight was on Thursday 3rd October 2013, at 10:10 am. Bear in mind, I only received confirmation of someone bringing in our passport on 1st October! That was very risky! Anyway, I boarded the plan on time and made way to the runway, that's what it's called right? Very model like. However, a few minutes later the flight had to turn back and we were told to get off the plane. We waited for a few hours and everyone got agitated. I mean truthfully, I didn't mind waiting as long as the plane was OK. So they checked the plane and had to fix some things on it. It's been three years now, I've kinda forgotten what it was. When everything was safe, we boarded the same plane. Alhamdulillah, the flight to the UK was smooth. I had to change my bus ticket to Leicester because of the flight delay. From here, it was obvious that the journey to Hajj is not as easy as we think it would be.

My stay in the UK was good. Everything went as planned and my Husband joined me a few days later. It was 1 and 1/2 day to our flight to Jeddah, to be exact.

On 7th October 2013, we went on the bus to Heathrow airport to meet up with our 'tour operater' for the hajj journey and to fly off to Jeddah. Everything was pretty dandy and smooth from the UK - Jeddah. But as we got to the airport in Jeddah, we slowly felt the tests we were getting.

We had to wait for our bus to arrive and bring us into Mekah. That's where we were going first because it was only a few days left to perform Hajj. We waited close to 6 hours at the airport. Whilst in Mekah, we had a few stops to go through. It's amazing how they greet all the Hujaj. We were given free food and drinks. They would stop our bus and made sure everyone got their snacks. As we were almost reaching our hotel, we were stopped by an owner of a restaurant. They're closing the shop and had some extra food left, so they decided to give us some proper meal. I think it was Mandhy Rice. After almost a day of travelling, that meal was very much waited for! Alhamdulillah and May Allah bless those people in their business and Akhirah. Amin!

Our hotel in Mekah wasn't close to Masjidil Haram. We stayed in Aziziya which is about 30 minutes away from the Masjid. On our first day in Mekah, we had a bus to bring us to the Masjid. We stayed in the Masjid for half a day and went back to our hotel. This is because we weren't familiar with the place and we have to go when the bus goes. As we went along, we made new friendd from different backgrounds and country. We have people from Bangladesh, Pakistan and also Morocco. Everyone came with one intention which was to get Hajj Mabrur! As we were staying away from the Hotel, we had either wait for the tour bus to bring us to the masjid or go on our own. Alhamdulillah during our stay there, people were competing to pay for the taxi fares! Everyone wanted some deeds of our Hajj. Money weren't an issue whilst we were there. After 5 days of staying in Aziziya, we went to Mina..........

Mina, that's a story on its own!











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