Thousands of face-masked pilgrims performing this year’s Haj gathered on Mount Arafat on Monday to atone for their sins, expressing hopes for peace and an end to the Covid-19 pandemic. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites in Makkah and Madina, has barred worshippers from abroad for a second year running and has restricted entry from within the kingdom under special conditions to guard against the coronavirus and its new variants. Only 60,000 Saudi citizens and residents, aged 18 to 65, who have been fully vaccinated or recovered from the virus and do not suffer from chronic diseases, were selected for the pilgrimage, a once-in-a-lifetime duty for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it. “It is an indescribable feeling that I got selected among millions of people to attend the Haj. I pray for God to put an end to these hard times the whole world has gone through under the coronavirus,” said Um Ahmed, a Palestinian pilgrim who lives in the Saudi capital Riyadh and who said she lost four family members to the virus. In previous years, more than two million pilgrims used to cover Mount Mercy on the plains of Arafat, sitting close to each other in the scorching heat of the desert city, carrying umbrellas and fans to keep cool as temperatures rose towards 40 degrees Celsius. This year pilgrims, dressed in ihram, had to observe social distancing and wear face masks on Mount Arafat. “The first prayer is to ask God to lift this pandemic, this curse and this grief for all humanity and for Muslims, so in the next years they are able to attend Haj and for millions to refill these holy sites,” said Maher Baroody, a Syrian pilgrim. A day earlier, Hajj pilgrims streamed out of the holy city of Makkah and into the Mina valley on Sunday, launching the rituals of the great pilgrimage which Saudi Arabia is holding in a scaled-down form for a second year. Since Saturday, groups of pilgrims have been performing the “tawaf” at Makkah’s Grand Mosque, circling the Holy Ka’aba. After that, they have been making their way to Mina, where they will spend the night. Mina sits in a narrow valley surrounded by rocky mountains, some five kilometres from the Grand Mosque, and is transformed each year into a vast encampment for pilgrims. Pilgrims were brought there Sunday on buses which were only half-filled to respect social distancing rules, and authorities provided 3,000 electric cars to transport the elderly and those with limited mobility. “We have applied social distancing inside the camps where there are four pilgrims in each room. We have put barriers between each bed to apply social distancing,” tour operator Hadi Fouad told AFP. “For the common areas at the camp, like the prayer area and the cafeteria, we have assigned a security company whose guards are spread throughout the camp to make sure there is no crowding.” In the high point of the hajj, worshippers will on Monday climb Mount Arafat. Also known as the “Mount of Mercy”, it is the site where Holy Prophet (PBUH) delivered his final sermon. Worshippers will undertake hours of prayers and Holy Quran recitals there. After descending the following day, they will gather pebbles and perform the symbolic “stoning of the devil”. The hajj, usually one of the world’s largest annual religious gatherings, is one of the five pillars of Islam and must be undertaken by all Muslims with the means at least once in their lives. This year’s pilgrimage is larger than the pared-down version staged in 2020 but is drastically smaller than in normal times, creating resentment among Muslims abroad who are barred once again. Participants were chosen from more than 558,000 applicants through an online vetting system, with the event confined to fully vaccinated adults aged 18-65 with no chronic illnesses. “I thank God that we received approval to come, even though we did not expect it because of the small number of pilgrims,” said Abdulaziz bin Mahmoud, an 18-year-old Saudi. Saddaf Ghafour, a 40-year-old Pakistani woman, was among the women making the pilgrimage without a male “guardian”, which was a requirement until recently. “It is a privilege to perform hajj among a very limited number of pilgrims,” she said. Saudi Arabia has so far recorded more than 507,000 coronavirus infections, including over 8,000 deaths. Some 20 million vaccine doses have been administered in the country of over 34 million people. The hajj, which typically packs large crowds into congested religious sites, is potentially a super-spreader event for the virus. But the hajj ministry has said it is working on the “highest levels of health precautions” in light of the pandemic and the emergence of new variants. Pilgrims are being divided into groups of just 20 “to restrict any exposure to only those 20, limiting the spread of infection”, ministry undersecretary Mohammad al-Bijawi said. Aside from strict social distancing measures, authorities have introduced a “smart hajj card” to allow contact-free access to camps, hotels and the buses to ferry pilgrims around religious sites. The hajj went ahead last year on the smallest scale in modern history.