umra - umroh 3

after 3 days and 2 night in medina, we continued our journey to mekkah. since we were going for umra, we had to go to a miqot place - a fixed place beyond which it is not permissible for a pilgrim (of hajj or umrah) to proceed towards Makkah without making ihrom (putting on the fabrics and making the intention) - known as 'bir ali'. so, again, it means women wear clean white clothes, and men wrap around 2 fabrics with no underwear. so, ladies, how lucky we are :).

we began our trip from bir ali (only a couple of mile from medina) at about 4pm and arrived in mekkah at about 10pm. my feet were swollen again. too much seating down. but the baby was fine. moving a lot. after check in to our rooms, we all gathered outside the hotel to go to masjidil haram to begin umra at about midnight. (since the saudi kingdom is doing an expansion on masjidil haram, therefore thousands of hotels had been demolished. dust everywhere. construction workers are working 24 hours except prayer hours. but this condition do not keep people away from going to masjidil haram to pray 5 times a day.)

again, I cried when I saw the ka'bah - the house of God. I thank God that I could come back and I want to come back one day. there were so many people there. since it's really hot in the day time, people wait until night time to perform thawaf - which consists of circling the ka'bah 7 times in a counter-clockwise direction. then we pray behind makam ibrahim. after that we went to perform sa'i - which means walking 7 times back and forth between the hills of safa and marwah (the distance between hills is about 400 meters). at that night it was so crowded. but I was relieved that I could perform the whole thing. it was so tiring.

I did the second umra a couple days after the first one. this time I did it during daytime. sounds crazy but it took shorter time, and not so many people did umra during daytime. doing thawaf under the sun was super duper hot. I walked fast, accompanied by papa nina and oom id. since papa nina had already umra the other day, so I did sa'i with oom id. it took only about 40 minutes since not many people there in the sa'i area.

just one day before we left mekkah, we -ladies- decided to go to multazam to pray and to try to kiss hajar aswad (the black stone) at one corner of ka'bah. so 9 am in the morning we went there. off course papa nina came with us to accompany me. there were so many people there. so papa nina and I decided to perform thawaf while waiting until the people get away. well ka'bah will never empty. so after take a couple of minute rest and drank a cup of zamzam water, I walked to multazam - a wall between hajar aswad and ka'bah door, only about 2 meters wide. I saw my tour leader - lenny- was already there. I didn't know what happened - I believe God gave me the way - suddenly the spot next to lenny was empty and I could easily move to multazam and I prayed. after that, I had to struggle in order to be able to kiss the black stone. it was super duper tough. I saw a lady almost got pressed to the ka'bah wall because she was pushed by men. again, I believe God gave me strength to push forward toward the black stone. suddenly I felt so light (like I don't have baby in my tummy) and strong. and as I got in front line, suddenly all men move away and I could kiss the black stone. and God gave me way to get away from the crowds.

the next day, we were super duper ready to go home. so we went to jeddah airport, had lunch at the airport, and got a snap shot along with the ladies with bunda hetty koes endang :)

by the way, this time papa nina and I got in to transit hotel in abu dhabi. it's so nice that we could lay down properly on the bed even only for a couple of hours.

thank you for this nice trip, honey!

-t h e e n d-