I have written about a lot of journeys on this site. This one sits apart from all of them, and I want to be careful about how I describe it.
In 2024 I performed Hajj, the pilgrimage that is obligatory once in the life of every Muslim who is able. It is not travel in the sense the rest of this blog uses the word. There is no itinerary to optimise and nothing to recommend.
What it is not
It is not sightseeing. The rites have a fixed shape and a fixed order, followed by millions of people at the same time, and your preferences are simply not part of the arrangement. For someone used to changing plans over breakfast, that alone was worth the experience.
The scale
Nothing prepares you for the number of people. I have been in large crowds before, at New Year in Istanbul, in Dubai, in cities built for volume. This is a different category.
What struck me was not the size but the uniformity of purpose. Everyone in the same simple garments, everyone doing the same thing, with the usual markers of status and nationality stripped out. In my degree I studied how societies build hierarchy. It was strange and clarifying to stand inside something engineered to dismantle it.
What I took from it
Patience, mostly. And a recalibrated sense of what counts as hardship. The heat is real, the walking is long, the waiting is constant, and none of it is the point. The point is what you do with your own head while it is happening.
I have travelled a lot to feel far from home. This was the first journey that made the distance irrelevant.
For anyone preparing to go
- Physical preparation matters more than people admit, walk more beforehand
- Go with realistic expectations about crowds and comfort
- Learn the rites properly in advance, do not rely on following others
- Leave the optimising instinct at home
I came back to the same job, the same laptop and the same map on the wall. I did not come back quite the same.