Adil Kachwala, 39, was heading back to his camp during the Hajj pilgrimage last week when people started fainting around him. Two older members of the group of British worshippers he belonged to couldn’t go on as temperatures soared to 46C (114F), so he walked the 10 minutes to his tent to get help.

The response from an official on duty: Saudi Arabian authorities had told him to only staff the tents and he couldn’t offer assistance outdoors. “My exact words were, ‘So do you want those guys to die?’ Kachwala said. “He said, ‘I can’t do anything.’” There were medics and volunteers outside, but they were outnumbered by the people who needed help from the unbearable heat.

Still, Kachwala knew they were the lucky ones. He’d seen worshippers from developing countries sleeping in the toilets of the Masjid al-Haram, the Grand Mosque that hosts the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site, as they couldn’t bear the long walk back to their hotels. Western pilgrims, he said, took up the more expensive hotels that surround the mosque in the days preceding the official start of the Hajj.

More than 1,300 people died during this year’s Hajj, with numerous cases of heat stress and some still receiving care, the official Saudi Press Agency said on Sunday. Over 1.8 million attended the pilgrimage, which took place from June 14 to June 19. The kingdom said it provided treatment to almost half a million people, including 141,000 unauthorized pilgrims. The government did not respond to a request for comment.

The fatalities, surpassed only by stampedes in 1990 and 2015 that killed almost 4,000 in total, underscore the dangers of undertaking one of the most challenging holy journeys in an increasingly warmer world. The majority who died this year were reportedly pilgrims who participated without official permission, highlighting how the poorest worshippers are most at risk as the costs of tours rise.

Pilgrims, especially from poorer countries, often travel to Saudi Arabia on tourist visas because of the extraordinary cost of taking part in the Hajj, said Madawi al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the LSE Middle East Centre. “It’s beyond the reach of so many pilgrims from Egypt, Bangladesh and Morocco and other countries, even though they save for a lifetime to come once,” she said. Those that make such trips also tend to be older and may have ill health, she said.

Muslims believe those who are physically able and can afford the pilgrimage have a religious obligation to undertake the journey once in their lifetime. Still, the pilgrimage can be particularly brutal on worshippers who spend a lot of time outside in prayer, sleeping outdoors and walking between holy sites.

That’s a challenge for Saudi Arabia, which has made religious pilgrimages a key target of its Vision 2030 economic plan. It hopes to host about 30 million foreign worshippers a year by 2030. On top of visitors for Hajj, almost 13.6 million non-Saudi pilgrims last year undertook the Umrah pilgrimage, a non-obligatory act centered at the Grand Mosque that can be done any time of the year.

Part of Saudi Arabia’s role as custodian of the pilgrimage is finding a fair way to allocate visas. In 2022 it extended the quota system it used for Muslim countries — offering around one visa for every 1,000 Muslims in the population — to all states, creating a more level playing field. This meant places like the UK saw the number of visas issues plummet from 25,000 down to 3,500. The largest number of pilgrims who died this year came from Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, India and Pakistan, a separate report from Agence-France Press said, citing diplomats.

While authorities have introduced harsh penalties such as lifetime bans for those who visit illegally, many continue to try to do so due to religious conviction. Almost 155,000 people who came to the country on tourist visas instead of special Hajj visas were turned away this year, the Saudi Press Agency reported.