Walkway to Mina

Bridge of passage to Mina where one of the rites of the pilgrimage take place, the stoning of the Jamarat. This place has been transformed utterly in the past few decades, with these massive new bridges constructed to carry the ever-expanding number of pilgrims. Mecca faces an unprecedented yet abundantly practical problem: how to accommodate the massive, ever-growing transient population of hajj pilgrims? Their number during the week of the hajj has grown exponentially, from between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand pilgrims in the 1970s to more than three million people today – and would be ten times that size without government-imposed regulations.