The hut at the summit of Jabal Nur

Continued from Views from on top Hira' cave.

After spending another 2 hours or so at the cave of Hira' it's time to leave. To do this one must first return to the summit of the hill called Jabal Nur. 

Being at the highest point of the hill does open up great vistas...

At the summit lies this hut...

There's also a smaller hut.

The bigger one serves as a rest and observation station.

You can buy drinks and then sit, even lie down and sleep...

It is a pity though if you just lie down and sleep. 

For the views up here are really superb...

Views from on top of Hira' cave

Just over 36 hours ago I made the article Climbing up Jabal Nur in the dark showing scenes at night. Now I'm going to show pictures taken in daylight.

And so me and wife reached the summit of Jabal Nur and then went down a bit to get to the cave of Hira'. Early Wednesday morning 10th April 2013, after sleeping besides the cave for a few hours, I climbed up.

I started savouring the views.

As usual I took in a number of angles going anti-clockwise...

OK. The previous pictures were taken before 6 am local time. About 25 minutes later I went up again. The stones to right of the person standing in green shirt is right above the Hira'. You could see people waiting to get inside.

At this time you could see yellow-golden tinge in the background. This is because the sun was just rising.

See the tall building in the background?

That's the 650-metre high or so Mecca clock tower which also marks the Mecca city centre.

Ah. Rays from the rising sun.

Lovely...

Climbing up Jabal Nur in the dark

Continued from Checking out the backstreets near the hotel.

Very late at night I brought the wife to the foot of a hill called Jabal Nur.

It is located about 5 km from Mecca city centre. We arrived by taxi at around 2am but went to look for drinks first before starting to climb almost 2.30.

This is the view about half an hour later.

We arrived at the summit about 15 minutes afterwards and these are some of the views.

These are views from a vantage point a bit below the summit.

We have to walk down to get to the cave known as the Hira', the place where Prophet Muhammad SAW used to lie in seclusion and received his first revelation from God.

Checking out the backstreets near the hotel

Continued from The camel farms outside of Mecca.

Late in the afternoon I took a walk at the backstreets near my hotel.

It was not busy then.

But I could still see plenty of activities going around...

The camel farms outside of Mecca

On to our 3rd day in Mecca.

Tuesday morning 9th April. We were taken on another tour to the outskirts of Mecca, this time starting at a camel farm.

It is one of a number of camel farms available alongside a highway.

The farm also sold fresh camel milk and w sampled some. For the record this is the 1,144th article in this blogspot.