Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Edging the Holy Land (Mecca Part 2)

One of the destination of the tour goes around the edge of the Tanah Haram edging the border where the Haram ends and start from the direction to Medina. It goes by the area of Masjid Hudaibiyah, the very place of Treaty of Hudaibiyah as well as one of the mosque that is an option of miqat procedure following to Omra. Not a surprise since this is the place where Prophet Muhammad saw. practice his omra. Outside of the little mosque stood walls made out of bricks, which also the area holding place for one of the briefings held by the guide of the tour.




As the tour came in, many vendor rushes to open their display of sold goods. As we leave, they also packed their items to be later displayed when other visitor came in since it was a pretty deserted place, 24 km away from the Masjid al-Haram.



Also located by the Masjid Hudaibiyah is a pretty large convenience store. 
We bought some ice creams per usual!





As we travel, we passes a wide array of gleaming desert. The tour of these places were done after Asha prayer. Traffic were not excellent mid-city as there were jams in some places, yet the sandy area itself were deserted, but not really empty midways as you can find several camel farms along the way. As the group were pretty demanding about trying out camel's milk, the guide then sort of pulled out a detour for trying out camel milk!




Freshly squeezed Camel milk came out pretty warm out of the Camel and does not smell. As the milk came out with foams, it was first strained upon serving, and the liquid milk can be drank right after. The foam is said to be good for health and beauty care, in this case we tried out applying it on the skin (free sample!), and consuming the milk is said to be effective for your stamina. We bought a bottle worth of Camel milk, priced at 5 SAR, but note that the bottle is not provided at the time by the farmers. The milk tasted similar to a full cream cow's milk but a little more on the savory side.



Next as we are heading back to our hotel near the Masjid al-Haram, we visited the Ka'bah Museum which were really titled as The Two Holy Mosques Construction Exhibition. It displays models of elemts of Ka'bah architetural development as well pieces of the items placed throughout history upon the hundred years of Islamic influences.




Grand display of the projected Masjid al-Haram post-development in 2017, as many area of the Masjid is now heavily renovated and under major construction.












We then continued to Masjid Tan'im to proceed with miqat to start off the optional (second) Omra provided by the tour. As I already had mine in the first place and I was accompanying my mother as she gotten a bit off from the physical requirement of the journey, I decided to stay back at the hotel. Unfortunately I did not took any pictures of Masjid Tan'im, but it is larger in comparison to Masjid Hudaibiyah that were also a miqat place, and its surrounding is more lively as it is located within the city. The two have different charms in their own way, but I can definitely say that the day is very well spent.

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