About this site

Umrah Planning is written and maintained by Md. Takik Hasan, a software engineer.

My experience, stated precisely

I have performed Hajj once and Umrah twice. None of those journeys was during Ramadan. I have not stayed in most of the hotels this site covers.

Those distinctions matter more than they might appear to, so here is exactly what they mean for what you read here:

• I know these routes as someone who has walked them — which gates lead where, what the approaches are actually like, how the crowds move outside Ramadan.
• I have not slept in these rooms. Nothing on this site is a review, and you will never find me describing a bed I have not used.
• Ramadan is the busiest season for Umrah, and I have not been during it. Every Ramadan-specific statement on this site comes from a cited source, never from my own experience.
• My own memory is never a source for a number. I will not tell you a walk took eight minutes because that is how I remember it — unreliable recollection is precisely what this site exists to correct.

Experience shapes which questions I think are worth answering. It does not become a measurement.

Why this site exists

Published walking distances between Makkah hotels and the Haram contradict each other, badly and routinely. The same hotel is described as a one-minute walk by one source and a three-minute walk by another. Hotels in a single complex are listed two minutes, five minutes and eighteen minutes from the mosque. Almost no source states which gate it measured to, or by what method.

That is not a small inconvenience. Pilgrims are making a once-in-a-lifetime decision, often spending thousands of dollars, partly on the basis of those numbers.

This site is an attempt to do that one thing properly: measure carefully, say how, cite the source, date it, and re-check it. Where I do not know something, I would rather leave it out than fill the gap with a plausible guess.

What that looks like in practice

Every factual claim here carries a source, the date it was last verified, and how it was determined. Facts that change — permit rules, prices, hotel status, transport — are re-checked on a schedule, and pages carrying them show when they were last confirmed. The methodology page sets out the standard in full, including how this site makes money.