Trio answers call of pilgrimage on bicycles
KUALA LUMPUR: After a 105-day cycling journey from Kuala Lumpur, three Malaysians including a married couple successfully arrived in Madinah, Saudi Arabia on April 19 on a mission to fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam, the Haj.
The trio, Ahmad Mohd Isa, 36, his wife Noradilah Mohd Sapie, 37, and a Forestry Research Institute of Malaysia employee Abdul Halim Talha, 57, arrived at the destination after traveling 12,000km.
Ahmad said the ride was shorter than the same same journey he made nine years ago because the main goal was to perform the Haj and they had to use other transport modes such as train, plane, ferry and cars due to unavoidable factors for half the journey.
“In 2016, my wife and I had just got married and the cycling adventure was more like a honeymoon involving 14 countries that took a year and three months to reach Mecca before performing the Umrah.
“But the mission this time is more focused, which is to perform the Haj, involving a route through seven countries and took only five months to reach Madinah,” he said when contacted recently.
From Kuala Lumpur, they cycled to Thailand and then took a flight to India and continued cycling to Pakistan and Iran before boarding a ferry to the United Arab Emirates and then continued cycling to Saudi Arabia.
Ahmad said another friend, Che Saad Nordin, 74, who was cycling with them at the initial stage failed to continue due to health factors when they arrived in Pakistan in January.
He added that although Che Saad has toured Malaysia 22 times, the geographical conditions of the mountains and the cold weather was a big challenge for him. – Bernama