and this is about as quiet as it gets

Hajj is the largest annual pilgrimage in The World.

It happens in Mecca, Saudi Arabia

and for Muslims it's a requirment that you have to do once in your lifetime

The Saudi government estimated that last year

there were over 3 million pilgrims who attended

but the unofficial number is much higher

My parents are originally from Lahora, Pakistan

They are practicing Muslims

And, last year they decided it was time for them to perform Hujj.

So, I went with them to help them with their journey

But, also for myself as well.

It was the first time for all of us

and I didn't go thinking I was gonna make a VBS documentary

I just took the smallest camera we had in the office

and literally shot from the hip. You're not allowed to shoot in most of the holy places

So, this is the footage I managed to sneak out.

We flew out on Saudi Arabian Airlines. It was about a 10 hour flight.

from JFK to Medina

Where we spent 6 days getting mentally prepared

for the Hujj that we were about to embark on.

[MEDINA, SAUDI ARABIA] In Pre-islamic times, Medina was a place

where the travelers who were crossing the desert

in camel caravans would come to rest

It was kind of like a desert oasis.

In modern times it's kind of the same thing, but less camels

and more shopping malls and hotels.

There's also a stunning mosque there

called The Prophets Masjid

Which is the 2nd holiest site in Islam

When you're there, you're basically just go to the mosque

five times a day for six days straight

to get into meditative state

The mosque is huge. It holds almost 700,000 people.

And when we were there for the Friday prayer

it was pretty much full

Flying to Mecca from Medina was really interesting

Before we went to the airport, we cleansed ourselves in a very specific way

we had to put on a white seamless garment made out of terry cloth

that all the pilgrims have to wear

it's a renunciation of the life that you come from

it's supposed to put everyone on the same level

There's no upper class or lower class.

Everyone's the same- it's just you in the sheet and that's it.

This is called getting into a state of eran

Besides the clothes, there are a lot of other rules.

You can't smoke, you can't have sex, you can't shave. You can't cut your nails

and there are a bunch of other no no's

So, we got on this charter just for the pilgrims

ten minutes after the plane took off from Medina

the captain announced that we flown over a designation point

and we were in the zone near Mecca

we all had to start reciting a prayer

our group guide got onto the loud speaker system of the airplane

and started yelling the prayer- everyone started chanting it

I had a moment where I looked around

and saw all these men and women in the white robes- men with their beards

and just thought: if someone from the west could see us right now

they'd think we were a bunch of fanatical jihadis

on some kind of an insa ne mission

when in reality, it's just pilgrims who decided to go on a

a spiritual quest

I think what was most odd about this flight

were the flight attendants who were all filipino- wearing

their normal Saudi flight attendant outfits

looking like they would rather have any other gig in The World than this one.

We landed in Jeddah and took a bus into Mecca

That ride into the city was one of the wilder scenes I've ever seen in my life.

There were all these pilgrims coming from all directions

All kinds of vehicles

You see them riding on the tops of cars and vans and buses

I remember seeing a pilgrim jumping from the roof of one bus to another

and he's just trying to get to the city

Mecca is not a very big city

during the year it's a relatively mellow place

except during the week of Hujj

The city completely transforms

Half the challenge of completing your Hujj

is getting all these rituals done

in a very strict timeline

and dealing with the fact that there are about 300 million other people there

to try and do the exact same thing at the same time

After we checked into our hotel in Mecca

we walked towards the grand mosque which is also known as the

[MASJID AL-HARAM: THE GRAND MOSQUE] Masjid Al-Haram. It's the holiest place in Islam

[MASJID AL-HARAM: THE GRAND MOSQUE] and it's a massive structure

[MASJID AL-HARAM: THE GRAND MOSQUE] this mosque can hold upwards of 4 million people

[MASJID AL-HARAM: THE GRAND MOSQUE] with its outdoor and indoor space

during Hujj, it's technically the largest gathering of people in The World

at any given time

This mosque is what muslims pray towards from all over The World.

As you're walking towards it- you feel the anticipation build

people have been waiting their whole lives to come to this place

once you enter the mosque, you see the kaaba

The kaaba is a black box in the center of the grand mosque

it was built around 2,000 BC

people have been praying towards it since before Islam started

When Mohammad finally showed up

he cleaned up the place. Got rid of all the idols the pagans had been worshipping

and reordained the building as The House of God

So, in the grand mosque we had to do our first ritual

which is called the toaf

which is basically doing seven counter clockwise laps around the kaaba

It's kind of like being in a moshpit with hundreds of thousands of people

But, instead of it being full of angry young punk kids

we were up against aggressive, pushy bangladeshi grandmothers

I had my parents on each arm interlocked

and we held each other as we went around the structure seven times.

Staring at the kaaba

it's a very intense and heavy vibe

but the one thing that's a total bummer is, you look up

and all you see are these

massive luxury five star hotels for the super rich muslims

who want to pray from the confines of their room.

After running around the kaaba seven times

you have to do a bunch of other rituals before completing your Hujj.

You have five days to get it done, and it's kind of like being

You have a checklist, you have to be smart, and you have to use strategy in order to make this happen on schedule.

You have to do the sai

Which is walking an running back and forth between two hills

Back in the day it used to be outdoors. And now it's been turned into

an indoor structure with two very, very long corridors

You have to spend a day at mount arafat

It's where the prophet delivered his last sermon from.

You spend the day in prayer and contemplation

and you beg for forgiveness for all of your sins.

It's a very important day.

And after spending the majority of it in a tent

I walked out and went into the direction of the mountain

I walked through this wild scene with people everywhere

camped out with their animals

As I got closer to Mount Arafat

it was such an incredible sight

because it had been completely transformed

and looked like a snow covered peak

Our tour group operator before we went on this trip gave us some guidelines

and the last point on this sheet said

Be patient, be very patient, be very very patient.

I fully grasped the meaning of this

when we had to take a three kilometer bus ride

and it ended up taking eight hours

It was the middle of night and we had to collect stones

it was one of our rituals in a place called Muslifa

We got off the bus and navigated our way

around sleeping bodies all over the ground

found the stones and then it was time to pray

and so we just threw the prayer rugs down on the side of the highway

and hit the mats.

After picking up the stones we got back on the bus

and drove to Mina

The valley of Mina is where the majority of the pilgrims stay.

It's a tense city

That fills up with the population of Seattle for a week

and after Hujj ends, it clears out again and goes away

It's tents as far as the eye can see.

We arrived in Mina, and that's where we had to

stone satan- that's the next ritual

this one was actually a lot of fun

We had to throw twenty-one stones

seven at three separate satan stoning stations

and I finally got to see what satan looks like

Up until a couple years ago

Satan looked like three large pillars

sticking up out of a large pit.

But, the space wasn't big enough

and there was a stampede and people died

so the Saudi government

They built three ramps the size of a mulit-lane highway

and there were three pillars inside of it that represent the devil.

They're lit in shades of green

and there's a strange rumbling loud sound coming out of them.

As my Dad pointed out- the whole thing made satan seem quit surreal

Before we finished the Hujj

We had to repeat some of the rituals that we'd already done.

We had to revisit satan

Throw rocks at him two more times

We had to go back to Mecca from Mina

And do another seven counter clockwise laps.

Then it was time for Eid

which marks the official end of Hujj

and is a big celebration.

It's the end of the state of eran that we've been in

and we slaughter an animal to celebrate it

And then the last thing you do

is, you shave your head.

This is the line for the barbershop

This is the line

Soon they will all be bald- all of these men.

The barbershops in Mecca have these massive lines outside of them

and you see

Hundreds of thousands of baldos walking around town.

Those people have all succeeded in completing their Hujj .

Dealing with the Hujj every year is a huge

legistial challenge for the Saudi Government.

So they sat up a ministy of H ujj

In the past, there have been incidences

where pilgrims were trampled, when ramps collapsed, and pilgrims died.

The Saudi govt. has invested billions of dollars

to create an infrastructure to make this work

with complex crowd-control techniques

What I saw when I went last year

was something that somehow manages to work.

But, it kind of goes without saying bringing 3 million people

to such a small place

is going to bring up some complications

There's a bit of a dark side

This many people in such a small place

it really gets unwieldy.

Despite the saudi govt's best efforts to deal with this profound

logistical challenge

The bottom line is that there are too manhy people.

And people need things

They need places to sleep.

They need food.

They need toilets.

The poor people that are there- you see them camped out on the side of the road.

For days on end.

It really felt like Mecca was maxing out by the end of Hujj.

The whole scene starts looking and feeling rather apocolyptic.

No matter where all these people come from

No matter what they do or how rich or poor they might be

During this pilgrimage to Mecca, I felt like everyone was just the same.

It was unlike any place I've ever been

or unlike anything I've ever experienced.

I was there standing amongst millions of people

I was there with my family.

On some level I felt like I was all alone.

On a personal trek

Everyday life felt like it was hundreds of thousands of miles away

We flew back to NY, we landed in the morning