“You will spare yourself scams and bad surprises.”
Alhamdulillah, Allah has granted me hajj this year. Just wanna add that whoever goes for Hajj should expect to be (unpleasantly) surprised by many things. Things just work completely different over there.
Another note, I was surprised to learn that at the checkpoints into Makkah, pedestrians can cross without being questioned… it’s actually the law not to stop pedestrians at checkpoints. As a result, thousands of people perform hajj without a permit. This would be ok only if they have accommodations figured out somehow. Otherwise, they become enormous obstacles for hujjaj and authorities… I’ll spare you the details :)
Alhamdulillah, I received my invitation from Allah (so to speak) for Hajj this year. I can definitely second what you’ve said, Akhi with respect to unpleasant surprises. However, one of the best things (among a lot of good things) that our Hajj group leader did was to prepare us psychologically for the journey. He reminded us that we’d encounter a lot of things that would test our patience but that we should remember that we are engaging in Ibadah while on the journey. As a result, I found myself letting go a lot of things I might otherwise have complained about or criticized.
One thing I thought about quite a bit was the people who slept on the sidewalks and in the courtyards of Masjid al-Haram and Masjid an-Nabawi – I felt bad that I had a hotel to stay in while these folks – many of whom, I surmise, scrimped and saved for quite a while in order to make the trip – had to brave the elements. Some people told me that these people chose to sleep there while others said that they couldn’t afford hotel rooms to stay in.
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“You will spare yourself scams and bad surprises.”
Alhamdulillah, Allah has granted me hajj this year. Just wanna add that whoever goes for Hajj should expect to be (unpleasantly) surprised by many things. Things just work completely different over there.
Another note, I was surprised to learn that at the checkpoints into Makkah, pedestrians can cross without being questioned… it’s actually the law not to stop pedestrians at checkpoints. As a result, thousands of people perform hajj without a permit. This would be ok only if they have accommodations figured out somehow. Otherwise, they become enormous obstacles for hujjaj and authorities… I’ll spare you the details :)
Alhamdulillah, I received my invitation from Allah (so to speak) for Hajj this year. I can definitely second what you’ve said, Akhi with respect to unpleasant surprises. However, one of the best things (among a lot of good things) that our Hajj group leader did was to prepare us psychologically for the journey. He reminded us that we’d encounter a lot of things that would test our patience but that we should remember that we are engaging in Ibadah while on the journey. As a result, I found myself letting go a lot of things I might otherwise have complained about or criticized.
One thing I thought about quite a bit was the people who slept on the sidewalks and in the courtyards of Masjid al-Haram and Masjid an-Nabawi – I felt bad that I had a hotel to stay in while these folks – many of whom, I surmise, scrimped and saved for quite a while in order to make the trip – had to brave the elements. Some people told me that these people chose to sleep there while others said that they couldn’t afford hotel rooms to stay in.