Day 17: Mina

So continuing what has happen on the day before. After Subuh prayers I went to check up on wife. She is on IV drip and sleeping. So I continued on back to my tent to catch a couple of snooze. But bad news stuck us on our tent. The air conditioning is busted. In 45c weather outside and 48-50 inside. The thing is this is a high tent that can fit around 150 people and each of them have their own sections. We got the front section so only that part is busted. So everytime I sleep I wake up in a pool of my own sweat. A good thing about here because it’s dry. I don’t stink that much. I woke up and saw there is a care package of an apple, biscuits and instant noodles. Since my last meal was close to 17 hours ago. I went to eat the instant noodles. Mind you that that is has been 5 months since I have any instant noodles. Wife texted me saying that she is okay and now in her tent. The morning was spend just resting and getting our bearings. We did prayers in the tent and had lunch (which was fish with rice) and dinner (chicken briyani) in the tent. We are all waiting for 8pm to go to the Jamrah to throw 7 stones inside the well. We actually can go after Subuh but because of the heat and the crowd is was best for us to go after nightfall. I made a lot of friends. Really this place should be called me-con… a convention of where I eat, sleep, pray and make friends. Who doesn’t want that. Come 7:30pm we followed the crowd and go to the site. Because we didn’t know the way we had to follow a guide and the guide walks really fast we were there in less than a hour. Oh yeah I almost forgot… my wife went to the medical tent to see if she is okay to go throwing stones the doctor straight away said no. You are not fit for the 9km journey. The good news is that I get to take her place. So that’s good. So back to the main event. The stone place was huge. It was like a carpark but with 4 floors and 3 stone pillars extending from the first floor to the top. On the first day we need to throw only one of the pillars. After throwing me and my relative (uncle and his kids head back. Aunt was also excluded from throwing). Going back was a challenge. Since we took a lot of energy walking fast we were kinda exhausted walking back. The kids have walk so far in front but we old people just walk slowly. I develop some chaffing in the thigh area which was super unpleasant. Came back around 9:40pm. After throwing the next thing to do is either you shave your head bald or cut some parts of your hair. The queue for shaving your head bald was too long so I decided just to cut some locks of my hair and then rest… take a nice shower… and finally change into some normal clothes. Now is sleeping time