By Navid Akhtar
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| Pilgrims 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.
Third day of Hajj today, but tragedy has truck. Fourteen pilgrims died in a
stampede during the stoning of the pillars, done to symbolise casting out
the devil.
There's lots of misinformation flying around as pilgrims called home
and spoke to each other, and the number quickly grew.
There are no British casualties but it is still very sad.
It's the third day of Hajj, and the start of Fesitval of Eid. Men need to
shave their head, and every pilgrim must sacrifice a sheep, cow or camel, so
we are off to film our pilgrims at the largest slaughterhouse in the world.
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| One of the main slaughterhouses in Mina |
One camel is shared between seven pilgrims, but there will still be hundreds
of thousands of animals.
But nothing goes to waste; in the old days all the meat was buried but state-of-the-art freezing facilities means all the meat is used for famine relief in Africa.
And we've caught up with all five of our pilgrims again - it's tough going,
much more difficult than we ever imagined.
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Live at the Hajj