First Travel to the City of Makkah

Hi Guys I hope you all are enjoying a very good health and a happy life. This is my first travelling blog that I did to the sacred city of Makkah in the last month of 2019 in December. This was my first international traveling to any country and I am happy to do it in the holy city of Islam. In this blog I will share my whole itinerary and the places of stay and my whole experience there while performing Umrah.

We have done our reservations from the travel agent and we travelled individually not through any group. We took off from Islamabad International Airport through PIA. 

The staff was very hospitable and the plane was quite clean and comfortable. We booked our seats for the economy class. The whole flight was very comfortable we took off at 4pm PKT; the take-off was very smooth the cabin crew instructed all the precautionary instructions to us before the take-off started. After around 40 to 45 minutes of the take off the meal was served that included Biryani, a Kheer followed by juice or drink of your choice and then later the tea being served. 

The staff was very cooperative. It was around a total flight of 5hrs and 30 min from Islamabad international airport to Jeddah International.

After we landed at the Jeddah airport at 9:45pm PKT 7:45pm SAT, we were asked for any type of allergies that we might have and they were asking if any women were pregnant or not. After assuring these things, we were given a tablet to eat and polio drops. These are their precautionary measures for the people coming to umrah or hajj to prevent them from any illness due to change of location or weather. After that we were worried to inform home about our safe arrival .One of our sim was enabled with the international call roaming on our jazz network we first informed home through that sim that we have landed safely and now moving towards the airport. The next step was to buy a sim card that we can use for the communication with each other.

There are various networks that are available locally in KSA like : Mobily, Zain,STC etc.

 We got a Mobily Sim. One thing to be aware of is that there are hawkers on the airport that sell used sims. Don’t buy them and even if you buy it check for a proper outlet from where you are buying the sims properly packed inside the proper packaging like we buy sims in Pakistan from franchises, they have sims jacked in the sim jacket. I am telling this with the personal experience that as soon as we entered the airport and after taking the medicines that the staff on airport has given us we were first encountered by these hawkers who were the only ones speaking in urdu for selling sims so we got attracted towards them. As you barely found anyone there who can speak Urdu or can understand English as well. Most of the people there speak only Arabic and their native languages from the countries of their belongings. So the only familiar voice was of those hawkers. So we moved towards them.

The sims we got was a normal person selling those with no jacket. We got 2 sims for 50 riyal each i.e.: 2 sims for 100 riyals in which a balance of 15 riyal was present along with 2 GB of data bundle that expired within 3 days of purchasing the sims. The seller didn’t told us about that it will expire in 3 days. And the balance was of 15 riyals that he added from a scratch card which also got expired along with blockage of sim on the third day. After buying sims we activated them in our mobiles and then after the procedure at airport we move towards our bus with our luggage.

After entering the city of Makkah Clock Tower is the first thing that you see, we first saw it at around 12:12am SAT. Masjid al Haram is behind it so it’s a mesmerizing sight specially for the ones who were traveling there for first time that after so much long time you have finally reached there.

It took us around 4:30 hours from Jeddah to reach our hotel at Makkah. Our Hotel was 1 km away from masjid AL Haram named Abraj Al Kiswah Towers Hotel, Makkah.

Hotel Check in at 1247am SAT. We checked in the room at around 130am SAT.

As it was a hectic day traveling from 10:00am in the morning PKT to 130am SAT which was 330am at Pakistan.so we were traveling from 10:00 am to 330am around 17:30 hrs of constant travelling. So after settling our luggage and refreshing up doing wudu and stuff we moved towards Masjid AL Haram at around 2:22am SAT.

Outside that masjid there are a lot of restaurants that stay open 24/7 I think because whenever we used to move from there we saw them open except for the prayers time. So we choose one of the restaurant from them as we were hungry and have eaten only the biryani that was given in the plane. we stopped at the Pakistani restaurant named “Zam Zam” and ate fries only to make it short as we didn’t wanted to waste any time further. Thank God the people there were able to understand urdu.

So after eating fries a box for 5 riyals. We finally started our Umrah at around 4am SAT and completed it at 7:38am. It can be completed in around 2 to max 3 hours but we were doing Umrah with my mother so we done it with her ease so took us a little longer.

Vicinity of Masjid Al Haram.

After performing Umrah we reached back at hotel room at around 830am (SAT) done our breakfast and went to sleep for a while.So that was all how we performed it.

Thanks for reading this post do follow my insta and facebook page for more interesting updates and  future posts :)