My experience at Haj 2024 with the Haj Committee of India

21 min readAug 12, 2024

Hello everyone! It’s been quite some time since I last blogged. And you can probably guess why from the title. Also, this is my first medium blog where I do not talk about Data Science/Machine Learning/AI. Well, maybe I’ll make a few exceptions every now and then for things that I think are important and have an opinion on. Let’s start right away!

The intent

Making the intention to go on Haj is the first step. What does this mean? It means that you are mentally, physically, and financially prepared to perform Haj. It’s not just wishful thinking. It’s not just thinking that ‘I hope I get to perform Haj someday.’ It’s about having a goal in mind on when you want to perform Haj. Maybe you want to do it this year or the next or in the next 5 years. Then you see how much money you have in your account and how much you will need to be able to perform Haj. We’ll talk more about the finances later, but if you’re looking to perform Haj with the Haj Committee of India, then you must budget at least 5–6 lakh Rupees per person (in 2024). The last and the most important point to consider is having the physical and mental capabilities. Haj is not a walk in the park. It is a walk (and sometimes run) in the hot Arabian desert. Most of us who come from India are not used to such harsh weather, and it takes a toll physically. It will test you in ways you would have never imagined. So please evaluate if you will be able to manage yourself for the period of 35–40 days in such weather or at least for 5 days (the period of Haj) when you will have to definitely get out of your rooms and hotels.

The medium

Haj Training Program at the Haj Bhavan of Haj Committee of India

If you’ve already made an intention to go on Haj, the next step is to decide how to actually get there. Every country in the world is allocated a quota by the Saudi Government on how many people they can send from their country. In 2024, India had an allocated quota of about 175,000. If you’re intending to perform Haj from India, you have two options. The first one is to apply with the Haj Committee of India (HCoI), which is the statutory body that organizes Haj for all Indians under the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India. This is the most popular way since the majority of the allocated quota (70–80%) is actually fulfilled by HCoI. This is also popular since it is comparatively cheaper and more affordable than the other option. The second one is to apply with private agents who regularly provide Haj and Umrah services. They have about 20–30% of the allocated quota, and they provide their own accommodation and other facilities that HCoI does not provide. They are 2–3 times more expensive than HCoI.

The application

In this section, I’ll briefly describe the application process to apply with the Haj Committee of India (HCoI). A good thing about this is that it is mostly online. Let me share a step-by-step account of how you can go about making an application.

The applications are all made on the online portal of the HCoI — https://hajcommittee.gov.in/.
First, you create an account using your phone number on their platform. The platform is clunky. You might struggle to create an account. I did. I entered my phone number and set a password, only to find that it didn’t accept my password later on, and I could not reset it. I had to use an alternate phone number.
Once you have an account created, you start entering the details of all the pilgrims who would be traveling with you. You are assigned a cover number, and this cover number will be the reference for all your future correspondence with HCoI. I am not getting into the details of having a male pilgrim as head of the cover, women traveling without mehram, or pilgrims over 65/70 traveling with another younger pilgrim. These are explained in detail in the Haj Policy document released by HCoI each year.
Once you’ve filled everything up and sent your application, you need to wait for a response from HCoI. This can be a frustrating wait if you have to plan travel/work or other responsibilities. I think it took about 2 months for the deadline (and the extensions) to expire and for HCoI to share an initial list of pilgrims they’ve selected.
If you’re selected, you have to pay a first installment (of around 70,000–80,000 Rupees, I think) to confirm that you’ll be proceeding with your application. They give about a week’s time to pay. They also ask you to submit your passport. So make sure you have it up to date with the expiry date far into the future!
If you’re not selected, you’re put on a waiting list. The number of selections and wait-listed people varies by state. If you’re on a waiting list, you don’t need to do anything. You just need to wait until they put out another list. If you get selected, you will find your cover letter in the new circular. If not, you keep waiting, because you might find a circular that comes out just a few days before the flights start departing that converts more people to selected. So, if you’re wait-listed, don’t lose hope and keep waiting (and watching!).
After about a month or so, they ask you to make another payment. This time it is around 1.5 lakh Rupees. You follow the instructions and make the payment. I liked the fact that you can pay all the installments online. Digital India for the win!
About 15–20 days before the start of the flights, you’d be asked to pay your 3rd installment. Make the payment, and with this, all your payments are complete. The total amount paid (all installments considered) was around 3,75,000 Rupees.
With this, your application has been completed and processed with all dues paid.

Pre-Departure Activities

Once you’ve made a couple of payments and submitted your passport, you start working on your medical certificate. You need to go to any government doctor and ask them to certify your health status. There is a template. Some doctors in government hospitals might already have them. You just ask them for it. If not, a sample should be available online. Take it, go to the doctor, and get it signed (after the check-up). Submit this document to the HCoI of your state, and your medical certificate would be done as well.
Then there was an orientation session where you’d be invited to the Haj Bhavan of your state for a one-day training program. The only useful information I got there was that I had to prepare myself for a lot of walking. They spoke about other things too, but they were not very useful for me since I fly often.
We were then asked to get ourselves vaccinated. The HCoI would organize this in the Haj Bhavan. There was some queue to get this done, but it was well-organized overall.
Then after some period of wait, the dates for the flights were finally announced.
We were asked to check in at the Haj Bhavan a couple of days before departure. It was nothing special, just waiting in line, getting confirmation on your cover number, and going back. Waste of time in my view, but I guess important for the folks at HCoI to know if everyone is in the city 2 days before departure.
We had to check in our baggage at the Haj Bhavan a day before the flight. This was a chaotic day. Long wait in the line to get our luggage plastic-wrapped (or bubble-wrapped as the people there called it), and then there was another huge line just to deposit our luggage. This was also the day to collect our passport, visa, boarding pass, Nusuk band, ID card, and luggage tag. This is also when you partially find out where you’re going to stay in Makkah and Madinah. I say partially because they just attach a sticker on your passport with some details about your stay, but the details have numbers of the building and the maktab that you will find more about when you actually get there. So some information, but not entirely very useful information unless you’re traveling with a group of cover numbers. In that case, it is useful for you to know if your fellow cover numbers (other relatives) will be in the same building or a different one. By the way, while they technically have a template on their website to request clubbing of cover numbers, they do not actually do it. If you’re traveling in a group with multiple cover numbers, there are chances that you will not be staying together for the entire journey. They, unfortunately, do not process them together. Anyway, we spent nearly 5–6 hours in the evening on this before we headed towards home after a tiring day of, well, checking luggage in.
The day of the flight: You go to the Haj Bhavan based on the time slot allocated to your flight. They make you wait inside for 60–90 minutes for no reason (they give some dry fruits while you wait) and then they put you on a bus. The bus was supposed to take us from Haj Bhavan to the airport, which is about 15–20 minutes away. Naturally, we were expecting a regular bus, but we got a sleeper bus. Neither did anyone want to sleep in the afternoon for a 15–20 min ride, nor did they want to climb up to sit opposite strangers on a longish bed. Anyway, that’s how it rolled, and we got to the airport.
There was a temporary Haj terminal that was set up. This was done quite well. It had everything: security check, immigration officers, facilities for prayers, and toilets. The temporary terminal was quite well-organized for something that temporary. They even gave us some snacks. We waited here for some time before it was time for us to get on the flight

Flight

I don’t have much to say here except that it was a unique experience to have 100% Muslim passengers. You often don’t get to see that so that was a bit different but apart from that it was a regular flight.

Madinah

We reached the airport in Madinah and were guided towards special Haj terminals after the immigration. I liked the signs on the way. There were things like ‘Welcome to the guests of Ar-Rahman’ written on the sides with some nice images of the Prophet’s mosque. Overall it was quite a welcoming atmosphere.
At the Haj bus station for Indians, we were told that there would be a yellow/green bus that would take us to our hotels. How would we know our bus? The ID cards that we got at the Haj Bhavan in India had the clue! If you turned the ID card, you’d find the color encoding behind under the building number and that would indicate which bus you’d have to take. We did not know this beforehand. A Pakistani guy at the bus station told us.
We took the bus to our hotels. We had a nice welcome snacks pack on our seats in the bus from the Saudi Government. That was a nice gesture. We then reached our hotels in about 45 minutes. There were a few volunteers who were taking our hand luggage from the bus and putting it into the hotel.
The checked-in luggage came later. They just dumped it in the lobby area or in the common areas of any of the floors in the hotel. You have to spend time searching for your own suitcase. Be ready to spend a few hours finding your luggage from tens, if not hundreds, of suitcases.
The quality of the hotels is an interesting topic. It’s not uniform. Some people will get hotels that are almost adjacent to the Prophet’s mosque with really good facilities. Some will get hotels that are 15–20 minutes by walk with really poor facilities. There is no way to tell which one you will get before you get there.
My luck wasn’t so great here and I had to stay in a relatively poorer quality hotel. The distance was still okay, I could reach the Prophet’s mosque in a 10–15 minute walk. But the facilities were substandard. The main door of the room was tight to open/close because it used to rub tightly against the carpeted flooring when moved. The door of the bathroom was chipped at the bottom. The bidet sprayed water like a plant drip irrigation water system. The fridge wasn’t working. However, we were at least lucky we had a bathroom within our room. For others on the same floor, they had to share a bathroom between 3/4 apartments. The AC was good though. The beds were decent. We managed.
After about 8 days or 40 salah period (that’s what we were told was our allocated time in Madinah), we had to leave Madinah.
The process of leaving was also a bit complicated. The luggage was to be taken away a day before, but there was no clear communication on when that would happen. We had to ask around and find out the exact time through other people. Eventually, they came around afternoon and took the luggage away.
The departures from Madinah to Makkah were also a bit random. We were in a group of multiple cover numbers together and each of us was put on a separate bus by a random allocation of cover numbers to different buses. We were not asked if we wanted to travel together or given an option to choose a bus.
On the day of departure, we were made to sit in the bus for about 1–1.5 hours before starting. We literally sat in the bus for close to 90 minutes doing nothing. At first it was okay since we were waiting for the bus to be completely full, but after some time, it was just not clear why there was such a delay. Anyway, we started, put on the ihram in the meeqat and reached the right building for our accommodation in Makkah in a few hours. There was another bus that apparently had a different story. The driver took them to a different location and asked them to get down there. When they said this isn’t our final destination, he said he wouldn’t be able to do anything since this is what was communicated to him. After a lot of heated discussion, the driver finally got the other bus to our building, which was the right destination.

From here onwards, I will only highlight the issues I faced during the rest of the Haj journey. If you would like to know more details about the positive aspects of the rest of the journey, you can comment below or send me a message separately and I can elaborate further.

Makkah

We were provided stay in Makkah Aziziyah. Buildings in Aziziyah for Hajis are in general quite far from Haram. I can understand that it is because we have so many Hajis from India and we need to accommodate them all, but efforts should be made to get as close to Haram as possible.
The quality of the buildings varied a lot. Some buildings had good quality, some had bad conditions. Some buildings had issues with lifts. People have had to walk up to 5th, 6th floor. Some buildings did not have washing machines. Some buildings did not have proper exhaust facilities (only a small outlet) in the kitchen, and it used to be full of smoke whenever there were many people cooking. Some buildings had internet issues. Internet worked intermittently and mostly in the lobby area. Sometimes, the AC was not switched on in the lobby area in the afternoon.
In order to reach Haram from Aziziyah, we had to take 2 buses. First, a private blue bus would take us from our building area to the bus station. Then a government yellow bus would take us from the bus station to the bus station right behind the palaces near the Haram. However, the bus service was sometimes irregular. It was closed for many days before and after Haj. It was also closed much earlier on Fridays. This, they say, is because of the Saudi government, but I’ve seen other countries’ buses operating even after India’s buses were closed.
One interesting change that the Government has made is that it now requires you to wear an ihram to access the lower mataf/tawaf area. If you do not wear an ihram and try to access it, you will be rudely shooed away by the police. They sometimes relax this, like when they did right after the day of Arafat, but from what I’ve heard, the ruling is still applied for the rest of the year. This means that if you want to do voluntary tawaf and if you’re not in ihram, then you have to access the upper floors to do it. It takes longer to complete a round above. Unfortunately, there is no other way.
However, if you can’t really walk, you have multiple options. You can get the buggy. But there is a long queue with waiting times of at least an hour before you can get on it. Then you can also get a wheelchair. And there are people who will be willing to push the wheelchair for you for money. These people are not officially registered, but you will find them outside the mosque area if you keep looking for them. Then there are government-licensed operators with wheelchairs who charge you relatively higher, but they’re also an option. Lastly, there is an option to take an electric vehicle that you can drive yourself. They have a separate floor to themselves, and thus you can drive without the worry of crashing into someone who’s walking. They’re reasonably priced, so that’s also an option that you could consider if you cannot really walk.
Small note on food: It wasn’t that problematic for me per se, since I don’t mind eating outside or have specific requirements. We were provided kitchens in Makkah, and there were often many women who cooked food for their families there. Some even had induction plates along and cooked inside their rooms. Our roommate used to do that. Anyway, food wasn’t a major issue for me, but it could be for some people.
Once it was time for Haj, no updates were provided from the organizers directly about Mina movement before the start of Haj. Everything I knew at the time about the travel was based on hearsay. Not a good position to start your Haj the next day.

Haj (Mina)

Over 45 minutes wait time just to come out of our camp when it was time to go to Arafat

Transportation of Hajis from Aziziyah to Mina was chaotic. The timing for departure was not communicated at all, with many rumors floating around. People were asked to wear Ihram from Isha the previous day when the buses only started departing after Fajr the next day.
There was a huge rush of people waiting for the buses to depart. There were more people waiting than the buses that were coming, leading to lots of pushing to get into the buses. For some people, buses didn’t even come. There were only a few buses sent to a building, but that didn’t carry everyone from the building. Many had to walk to their Mina camp (which can be quite confusing for a first-timer).
The tents in Mina were overall okay-ish, but I think the number of people per tent could have been reduced or the tents could have been divided internally to make it look less crowded.
The food was hot and had some variety. I think that was quite nice of the government to provide catered food for all the days we stayed in Mina for all 3 times of the day. However, the water could have been provided in a better way. It was kept in coolers that did not cool the water at all and kept the water, at best, at room temperature. This was not very helpful since the heat was extreme and colder water would have been better.
There was lots of littering near the entrances of the tents leading to walking paths with garbage on them. Maybe having more dustbins could have solved this. Or maybe some civic sense. I think the latter, but the former is a far easier problem to solve.
Toilets were always busy with at least 3–4 people in line. More toilets per camp were needed. Some toilets were made unusable very soon — too dirty / things were broken. Need to have replacements done quickly to make them usable.
No clear communication from the organizers on Arafat departure. There was, again, a lot of chatter around what would happen and when.
When it was time to depart to Arafat after Fajr, everyone was out on the narrow alleys in the Mina camp trying to get out, and the gate was locked. This led to a lot of heat, and some women even faced breathlessness because of this.
Had to stand for an hour outside the Mina tent (inside the camp) packed with hundreds of Hajis waiting for the locked gate of the camp to open to board the bus. When the gates were forcefully opened and people came on the streets, buses didn’t come for at least 30 minutes.
When the buses came, they were very few in number and there were many Hajis, leading to pushing to get into the bus. Some buses got lost on their way to Arafat, leading to 3–4 hours in the bus before reaching Arafat. Some people never got buses from Mina. They started walking, trying to get into other countries’ buses. The police even tried to place them in random buses that were going towards Arafat, but these would drop them off in random locations as well, so that didn’t help.
Metro facilities were not provided for everyone but only some selected camps, so they couldn’t even take the metro. This, despite the fact that everyone actually pays for a metro card when they make payments to the HCoI.
The camps in Mina for the Indian group were arranged in a haphazard manner. Even if the camps were numbered consecutively, they were not next to each other in the physical space. This led to massive confusion. Many elderly pilgrims lost their way. I met an old man who said that he’d been searching for his tent for more than 3 hours already. And all of this while the sun was blazing at 45–50 degrees. An improvement in the numbering and the positioning of the tents could make a world of difference.

Haj (Arafat)

There weren’t many issues in arrangements at Arafat as we had to only stay there for a few hours, except that buses were not taking Hajis directly to our camps and were instead dropping Hajis many kilometers away from the camp.
No clear communication was provided on how to leave Arafat. There were also not many buses available to take Hajis from Arafat to Muzdalifa. In fact, there were a few private buses that were running and charging SAR 300 per Haji to take them from Arafat to Muzdalifa!
Many Hajis had to either wait for a long time or walk to reach Muzdalifa. Some Hajis had to get into jam-packed buses and stand for multiple hours to reach Muzdalifa in the slow-moving buses. More buses could have solved this.
We eventually decided to walk all the way from Arafat to Muzdalifa. It was a one-of-a-kind experience that I will perhaps never forget. The atmosphere all around was great, and I did not feel the distance that much because of the spirit of the people around. Maybe this was for the best, but I think one should be able to choose between walking or taking a bus and not be compelled to walk because there are almost no buses for hours.

Haj (Muzdalifa)

There weren’t many issues in arrangements at Muzdalifa since we only had to stay there for the night under the open sky.
However, there was again no clear communication on how to move from Muzdalifa to Mina.
There weren’t many buses to take Hajis from Muzdalifa to Mina. Many walked. The few buses available were also jam-packed with a lot of pushing to get into them.

Haj (Jamarat)

No communication on how to go from Mina camp to Jamarat.
Jamarat was about 3–3.5 kms from most Indian camps. Everyone I know walked to and fro (around 7 kms). We did this 3 times in 3 days, so a minimum of about 21 kms walk.
One of the 3 times was an eventful one for us. A near death experience. An experience that I will never forget. Because of the extreme heat, the Government had mandated that people should not venture out of their camps for the stone pelting in the afternoon. They were supposed to be allowed after 4 PM. Great! But there’s also the thing that most people want to do it before Maghrib (around 7 PM). So what happened as a result, was that people came out in massive numbers in this time period. We were also there. There was a massive turnout when moving towards the Jamarat. Specially in that complex. It had become very hot. So hot that the police requested us all to take our umbrellas out and use it as fans by making it move up and down. So hot that I saw people literally faint in front of my eyes. And so packed that it was a struggle to take the fainted person to safety. We kept moving forward. And when we were near the first Jamarat, there was a great frenzy. People were trying to stone pelt from all directions and were moving both inwards and outwards. There was also some pushing. In this struggle, I almost lost my balance. But I quickly regained my footing somehow. I then went against the grain and made way away from the people that were coming inwards to pelt. We finally found some breathing space and rested there for a while. We then changed strategy for the other two, which were comparatively less busier anyway, and pelted them from the outer circle. And with that ended our adventure as well.
No buses were made available at all. We had to walk every time we had to go to the Jamarat from our camps. Maybe this is something the authorities can work on and make life easier for the pilgrims in the future.

Haj (Back to Aziziyah)

No clear communication on when the buses will arrive to get back to Aziziyah.
Again, very few buses arrived and lot of pushing to get into these buses. Some Hajis had to fight with the driver to take them into their buses.
Some Hajis were dropped off far (1–2 kms) from their buildings with luggage in their hands. They had to walk all the way back after Haj.
We walked back until we could find some means of transport. What we didn’t know at the time was that we wouldn’t find anything until we left Mina. So we basically walked from our camp in Mina till the end of Mina/beginning of Makkah Aziziyah. This was about 1.5–2 km in scorching 50 degree heat in the afternoon. Fun times.
Then, when we reached the beginning of Makkah Aziziyah, we started to see some taxis. And some folks pretending to be taxis - regular folks who decided to turn taxi drivers to make a quick buck. And quick buck did they make indeed. When I asked some of them to take me back to my building in Aziziyah, which was another 1.5–2 km from there, they quoted about 300 SAR! The same driver would have taken me for 10 SAR for the same ride just a few days back. We eventually managed to find someone for 100 SAR and reached our building in Makkah Aziziyah.

Back to India

This was the end of our Haj. What follows next is how I got back to India.

The entrance of the office from which we were taken to Jeddah

Since I had to get back to work, I had opted for an early exit. This meant a deviation from the planned return flight that HCoI was operating.
HCoI said that you can go early, provided you book your own ticket and do not claim a refund for the flight you miss. I decided to do that since I had to be back early and had no other option.
I did that, went to the Indian embassy office in Makkah. They asked me to submit a form stating that I am intending to exit early (I did this 5–10 days before Haj started, to be clear).
They said they’ll call a few days after Haj. The call didn’t come. I went again. They said go back, it’ll come. It didn’t. Went again, got my application processed, the call came the next day.
He asked me to talk to the Maktab office that has my passport. What’s a maktab? HCoI outsources the managing of the Haj to a local company. They’ve divided the entire operations into different maktabs with numbers assigned to each. Let’s say my building was assigned maktab 999 (random number). I had to now talk to maktab 999’s office to get my passport.
They asked me to come to their office 12 hours before departure along with my luggage and everything else.
I went there 12 hours before and he said that he has a driver ready to take me to Jeddah from Makkah, but I will have to pay 300 SAR per person. For context, a train ticket costs around 35 SAR per person between Jeddah and Makkah.
Anyway, I had no other option. I paid, got to Jeddah airport, got on a flight there and reached India the next day.

And with that, my journey came to an end. It was exhilarating, exciting, challenging, and tiring all at the same time. Would I do it again? Maybe. Maybe only if HCoI promises not to get sleeper buses. And maybe only if I have my passport with me all the time during Haj. Will that ever happen? You never know. All you can do is pray! And I pray that Allah gives you the opportunity to witness and perform Haj at least once in your lifetime. Good luck and stay blessed!