By Navid Akhtar
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| Security centre at Mina |
Navid Akhtar is a television producer/director and a member of Channel 4's Hajj team in Mecca.
Each day this week he will be sending a Postcard from Saudi.
We began filming today at the stoning ground, in the three-storey control tower where Saudi Arabian
army and civil defence manage Hajj and the flow of pilgrims trying to get to the three pillars.
They told us about plans for the future, how the stoning ground will be re-designed by 2006 to accommodate
more people. They believe Hajj will continue to grow over the coming years and are determined to be ready
for it.
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| Crowd around the Jamarat area |
We had to take a short-cut from here to save two hours travelling - but it meant quickly
passing across the approach to the stoning which was a bit hair-raising.
We've been confronted regularly by pilgrims who are suspicious of us. Some Muslims believe television
is wrong, and is something from the devil, so we have to promise not to video them, before they give us
a quick lecture.
I'm always being asked if I'm a Muslim, I'm wearing western clothes, not the white ihram, which does make
me stand out a little. I explain I am...I couldn't be in Mecca if I wasn't.
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| Filming in Mina |
How much is your camera worth and do you want to sell it? This is one of the other common
questions we get. A photographer with me, who has a £3,000 camera, insists on opening bartering
at five riyals, before knocking himself down barrow-boy style to three riyals - less than a
pound.
Hopeful buyers always look a bit surprised, but do laugh when they realise we're journalists and are just
joking.
Read Navid's previous Postcards from Saudi from Day
Three | Day Two | Day
One
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Live at the Hajj