By Navid Akhtar
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| Hajj producer Navid Ahktar |
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 have been here just over a week, preparing for this, the spectacular first day of Hajj. Our shoot started 4am today to catch morning prayers at the Haram mosque.
With a population of one and a half million, Mecca has been bursting at the seams with an influx of two million pilgrims into what is one of the oldest and most sacred cities in the world.
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| Pilgrims in Mecca heading for Mina |
Everything in the past few days has revolved around the five daily prayers as the large crowds have brought the city to a standstill. It's the equivalent of people coming to a service at St Paul's Cathedral and the crowds outside spilling all the way down to the Strand.
The first rite of the Hajj is or all pilgrims to leave Mecca and head for the tented city of Mina. This has to be done before the midday prayers, so you can imagine three million people leaving all at once makes the rush hour in London look like a gentle stroll in the park.
It has caused the mother of all traffic jams. As we filmed the buses leaving the centre of Mecca, we were arrested and detained by police.
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| The greatest traffic jam on earth |
Our minders went to prove who we are and, more to the point for the Saudi authorities, that we weren't terrorists. Such is the high level of security here, it's a fact of life for a western TV crew, and we're routinely stopped a couple of times a day and questioned.
Even when we prove we have permission to be here, the sense of suspicion still hangs in the air.
After two hours sleep at lunchtime, we headed to Mina ourselves. And for the first time we are greeted in a broad Yorkshire accent in the British camp by pilgrims from Bradford. Here in the camp there are other pilgrims from Middlesbrough, Hounslow, Brick Lane in London, Birmingham.
We've been in Saudi Arabia for eight days, but it feels just like we're back home.
Navid Ahktar's diary will also feature in the Metro this week.
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Live at the Hajj