Road to Masjid al-Haram

Haram is also considered as "The Grand Mosque(of Makkah)". The main reason why this is one of the most important mosques, is because of the "Kaba Sharif". Kaba is not what Muslims worship, its just the direction towards which the Muslims worship.

But before describing The Grand Mosque or Kaba Sharif, let me give a tour of the road to the mosque. Earlier Makkah, was all mountains. These mountains are now converted to hotels, shopping complexes etc. The hotel where I was putting up was on a up hill. But fortunately the lane which we used to take to reach the mosque was plain land. So I could see the entire road from the door step of my hotel.

The first time when I left my hotel for the mosque, I got scared on seeing the road. In-fact there was no road. All I could see was people. As if it was a river of people wearing single colored clothes, and more people from smaller lanes were joining the main river.

I joined the crowd. Being a part of the crowd was less scarier than seeing it from top. I had to go with the pace of the crowd. First everything was wonderful. But slowly it was iritating, because of the slow pace. You cannot do anything about it. You cannot walk faster than the crowd or slower. In crowd you have to go with the pace of the crowd.

I tried to overtake few people, but it was of no use. They started saying something to me in a different language, but with a smile. I did not understand and went with the pace of the crowd. It was not a very wide road. Both sides of the road had shops of every kind. There were restaurant, juice shops, garments, shoes, jewelery shops; everything.

Most of the shop keepers looked Asian. I approached few and came to know they were all Bangladeshis. Being a Bengali myself, communication problem got sorted out, while buying anything. But the owners of most of the shops were Arabian. There were Pakistanis and Indians too, but in very less propotion.

I must mention one thing here. While staying at Makkah we used to go for our Fazr prayers, which is around 4:30 in the morning. During this time most of these shops were closed. The surprising thing was, none of these shops had doors. When a shop is closed, just the lights are switched off and a curtain kind of cloth is wrapped around the doorway, as if just preventing the cat's from the entering the shop. This is was quit unbelievable unless you see it for yourself. Probably, only the jewelery shops had shutters.

But no matter how much people were there, the road never looked dirty. There were recycle bins, every 2-3 minutes you walk. There were people cleaning up the road as well, because of those people who preferred throwing trash on road rather than the countless dustbins on both side of the road.

It took around 30 minutes to reach the mosque, which in normal situation(i.e. not during Hajj) would not have taken more than 10 minutes.