The initial plan was for me to follow a backpacking group to Greenland - namely, to Kangerlussuaq & Ilulissat. Due to many circumstances, the trip was cancelled, but since I had already bought my tickets, I thought: eh, why the heck not.
Seems like most of my solo adventures started off this way.
Greenland has been on my radar ever since I saw a pamphlet of it during my visit to Iceland back in 2015, and I made note of it in my mental bucketlist. So when the opportunity presented itself, I immediately jumped at the chance to experience what Greenland has to offer.
As the journey was made in winter (Jan 2018, to be precise), there wasn't a lot of flight options for Malaysian travelling to Greenland. I decided to book a flight with a transit in Copenhagen and make my way to Greenland (in summer there are a lot more flight choices).
Since I had been to Copenhagen back in 2017, I opted to make my way to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, which is located several hours outside of Copenhagen. The weather was gloomy, making me feel like staying indoors appreciating some art was probably warranted when it was so cold out. (Having said that, there are several trails & art installations outside too, which was equally interesting as the exhibits inside.)
The most infamous permanent art installation at the museum was inarguably Yayoi Kusama's beautiful room of lights, aptly named Gleaming Lights of the Souls, which has been there since 2008. Her fascination with orbs, spheres & its equivalent has been a source of amusement for me and my friends back in 2012, when we first encountered her work at a beautiful ryokan in Osaka - the owners of the ryokan was an art enthusiast and really appreciated Kusama's aesthetics and their ryokan had a lot of Kusama's trademark spheres and circle motives. It's sort of interesting how often her name popped up afterwards, as she continued to collaborate with LV and created more art installation all around the world.
I spent half a day at the museum before stopping for lunch at a cafe near the train station which would take me back to Copenhagen afterwards. Honestly whenever I'm left to my own devices, I prefer a slower pace and allocate only a handful of experiences or destinations, and the moments in between would be filled with some solitude and reflections at a cafe or back in my accommodation (I would classify myself as 60% extrovert & 40% introvert, and I always crave for some alone time). I think this was what spurred me to continue my journey to Greenland solo, despite the fact that I was nervous to be travelling alone to a country with harsh weather conditions in the middle of winter.
The next day, my Air Greenland flight took off for Kangerlussuaq before heading to Ilulissat. When you book a flight with Air Greenland, there is an option for a layover in Kangerlussuaq, and this was what I opted for when I made my booking - and off to Kangerlussuaq I go.
Kangerlussuaq
After an uneventful flight, I arrived in Kangerlussuaq Airport and immediately tried to find my bearings to make my way to my stay for the night. The airport is Greenland's largest commercial airport, and I see a lot of activities and people inside the airport more than I do around town, heh. The population of the Kangerlussuaq settlement is only at approximately 500-600 pax, and I see this play out in real life when I observed how every local interaction makes it seem like everyone knows everyone.
When I arrived at the airport, there was only one lady manning the information booth, and I made my way to her to ask how I would be able to get to my accommodation for the night. Here's how small & tight the community is: she actually offered to drive me to the accommodation herself, free of charge, for some unfathomable reason, and left her booth unmanned while she drove me there for about 10-15 minutes. (Obviously there was no need for Uber here.)
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| The view from outside my window |
I later asked her if this was common, and she answered that it's common for people to fulfill many roles in such a small town - what's more, she's actually not a local Greenlandic and actually hailed from Denmark. I see this pattern of Danish people working in the Greenland tourist industry a lot when I made my way to Ilulissat later - and it dawned on me why when I found out that Greenland is actually an autonomous territory under Denmark, which explained a lot (in fact Greenland only gained almost full autonomy from Denmark back in 2008!). Honestly if you mostly followed the tour groups around Greenland settlements, you'd be hard-pressed to find a local being the tour guide. Not really a complaint, just something I observed and found curious.
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| The tour bus - not your typical bus, but a heavy duty one |
Having little daylight hours in the winter time is no fun for exploring the area, and as my accommodation wasn't anywhere within walking distance of most attractions in town, I opted for a tour bus around Kangerlussuaq, and was lucky that there was one operating at the time I was there. There were other tourists on the bus with me, although it was only 12 pax if I remembered correctly.
The drive around was interesting, with the bus driver juggling his time driving the bus and being a tour guide as he shared with us some facts on Kangerlussuaq as we passed through notable areas of the settlement.
The road that was available for travel was only 15km in length (!), and the total length of the road network in Greenland only amounted to 150km! Little wonder that flights, boats (in the summer) & dog sledding (in the winter, although this mode has declined in recent times) remain the more popular travel modes in between cities. Looking at Greenland geographically, it's little wonder that they did manage to build the road in the unforgivable climate that they're presented with - 75% of Greenland's mass is covered in ice sheets and the settlements are sometimes separated by fjords, which makes a road network in between all the settlements almost an impossibility. It's certainly an interesting challenge to the engineers in Greenland.
(Compare that to Iceland, where you are able to travel to most attractions and places by car and cover the whole area in two weeks or more. Of course, the fact that Greenland is 21 times bigger than Iceland also complicates the whole road network thing, especially when a majority of it is covered in ice.)
The weather was decidedly not in my favour on that day - you can see the sun peeking out, but the temperature was a cool -27C. Coming from a tropical country with an average temperature of 30C, the cold weather was a massive shock, and by the end of the tour I could barely feel my toes, lol.
Nevertheless, the tour was enjoyable enough, and I was the only tourist dropped down at Old Camp while the rest of the tourists were dropped by in the city, where accommodation options are aplenty but were a bit more expensive.
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And with that, I bid you good night, Kangerlussuaq, even though it's like 6pm in the evening. |
I caved in & jumped into bed for an early night, as the next day I would be making my way to Ilulissat.
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