In the afternoon, I visited Herfy. I had a fish sandwich with a coke and a medium pack of French fries – all this for SR 17. The food, the decor and the service all resemble that of McDonald’s. The difference was that the portions were bigger, so my money basically gave me “more bang for the buck”. Taste-wise, it was delicious and similar to the same sandwich I usually have in Mumbai from McD.
In the evening, the Indian service staff at Mersal suites brought me a meal of roti, chicken tandoori, and pasta (which I set aside in the room refrigerator for breakfast on the next day).
It was a delight to pass sand-eroded hills, empty roads, beautiful desert landscapes and so on. At the same time, it got lonely at times, and one actually yearned for good music or company while doing such a long journey.
It was about half past one when I saw the emerging suburbs of Riyadh (Fig 9), and then, I was past them and into the heart of the city. Asking around, I managed to locate the way to the venue of the university. It seemed like a prudent thing to do, so that I would be able to decide where to take a room in a hotel. The condition would be that it should be near enough to the University.
To have performed Hajj in such unusual circumstances also means that I would be able to advise others on how to go about performing Hajj in this manner. Only Allah can tell whether this can be construed as a good thing or not. The good thing is that I can definitely advise people to spend more and go with a comfortable agency, whichever it may be, and preferably legally cleared with the Saudi authorities; to perform Hajj “legally” means not having to suffer as my friends and I did. It means that one gets proper accommodation at Arafah, Muzdalifah and Mina. It means not having to worry about whether eating food properly may increase one’s desire to visit the toilet, especially because they are neither clean, nor easily accessible, esp. at Arafah and Muzdalifah. It means that once one lands at Mina, one can stay there for the next three days to pray and visit the Jamarat whenever one wants to without actually having to walk up and down from Makkah and to it multiple numbers of times. It means that one is not inconvenienced by having to squat on roads at Mina and being told by the police to get up and go elsewhere every single evening/night.
