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NUUK: Greenland has a message for the rest of the world: We’re waiting for you.
“Come visit Greenland,” said Nukartaa Andreassen, who works for a water taxi company in the capital city, Nuuk. “Learn about it, learn about us. We love to have you. We love to tell our stories and our culture.”
The mineral-rich Arctic island is open for tourism. Whale-watching tours, excursions to the iconic puffin island and guided charters through remote settlements are just the beginning of what Greenland has to offer visitors. Locals want to show what makes the island unique beyond a recent diplomatic dustup with US President Donald Trump.
“Our goal and mission is to present and be the ambassadors of Greenland,” said Casper Frank Møller, the chief executive of Nuuk-based tour guide company Raw Arctic, “and to show what beauty you can experience while you’re here.”
The tourism industry is expected to see a boom this year following the launch of a new route between Nuuk and Newark, New Jersey. The inaugural flight June 14 was the first direct travel from the US to Greenland by an American airline.
Traveling to Greenland
Before the direct flight, air passengers departing from the US needed a layover in Iceland or Denmark to reach Greenland. The change benefited travelers like Doug Jenzen, an American tourist who was on the United Airlines plane from New Jersey.
“I came with the purpose of exploring some of the natural sites around the world’s largest island, hoping to support things like ecotourism and sustainable travel while supporting the local economy,” Jenzen said.
Cruise ships can already dock on the island but they bring less money to businesses catering to tourists because passengers sleep and usually eat on board.
Some 150,000 tourists visited Greenland in 2024, according to Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s business minister.
“We really want to grow the tourism sector. It’s a very good fit for many in Greenland,” Nathanielsen added. “Tourism is about good vibes. It’s about sharing culture, sharing history. It’s about storytelling. And as Inuit, that’s very much part of our heritage.”
The Trump effect

Greenland gained worldwide attention when Trump earlier this year announced he wanted to take control of the semiautonomous Danish territory, through a purchase or possibly by force.
Denmark, a NATO ally, and Greenland have said the island is not for sale and condemned reports of the US gathering intelligence there.
Despite the diplomatic tension, Frank Møller of Raw Arctic sees an upside.
“It has kind of put Greenland on the world map. And it’s definitely a situation that Raw Arctic has used to our advantage,” he said.
Still, beefing up the tourism industry should happen at a pace that prioritizes the voices and comfort levels of the roughly 56,000 people on the island, he added.
Andreassen, of Nuuk Water Taxi, agreed.
“It’s very important for me to tell my own story. Because I always feel like when I meet new people, I always introduce a whole Greenland,” she said. “It’s important for me to show our own culture, our own nature. Not by television, not by other people from other countries.”
‘Unforgettable moment’

In June, Pinar Saatci, a 59-year-old Turkish tourist, saw several whales breach the ocean surface during a boat tour.
“It’s very exciting to be here, at the other part of the world, so far away from home,” she said. “It’s a very exciting and unforgettable moment.”
Risskov Rejser has visited Greenland several times through her travel company for Danish travelers. But she is worried about the impact of a tourist invasion.
“For me, the worst thing would be if mass tourism starts and people come here, and sort of look upon the Greenland people as if they were a living museum,” she said. “It has to be done in a respectful way and you have to consider what the consequences are.”

SAMJUNG: The Himalayan village of Samjung did not die in a day.
Perched in a wind-carved valley in Nepal’s Upper Mustang, more than 13,000 feet (3,962 meters) above sea level, the Buddhist village lived by slow, deliberate rhythms — herding yaks and sheep and harvesting barley under sheer ochre cliffs honeycombed with “sky caves” — 2,000-year-old chambers used for ancestral burials, meditation and shelter.
Then the water dried up. Snow-capped mountains turned brown and barren as, year after year, snowfall declined. Springs and canals vanished and when it did rain, the water came all at once, flooding fields and melting away the mud homes. Families left one by one, leaving the skeletal remains of a community transformed by climate change: crumbling mud homes, cracked terraces and unkempt shrines.
A changing climate
The Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain regions — stretching from Afghanistan to Myanmar — hold more ice than anywhere else outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Their glaciers feed major rivers that support 240 million people in the mountains — and 1.65 billion more downstream.
Such high-altitude areas are warming faster than lowlands. Glaciers are retreating and permafrost areas are thawing as snowfall becomes scarcer and more erratic, according to the Katmandu-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development or ICMOD.
Kunga Gurung is among many in the high Himalayas already living through the irreversible effects of climate change.
“We moved because there was no water. We need water to drink and to farm. But there is none there. Three streams, and all three dried up,” said Gurung, 54.
Climate change is quietly reshaping where people can live and work by disrupting farming, water access, and weather patterns, said Neil Adger, a professor of human geography at the University of Exeter. In places like Mustang, that’s making life harder, even if people don’t always say climate change is why they moved. “On the everyday basis, the changing weather patterns ... it’s actually affecting the ability of people to live in particular places,” Adger said.
Communities forced to move
Around the globe, extreme weather due to climate change is forcing communities to move, whether it’s powerful tropical storms in The Philippines and Honduras, drought in Somalia or forest fires in California.
In the world’s highest mountains, Samjung isn’t the only community to have to start over, said Amina Maharjan, a migration specialist at ICMOD. Some villages move only short distances, but inevitably the key driver is lack of water.
“The water scarcity is getting chronic,” she said.
Retreating glaciers — rivers of ice shrinking back as the world warms — are the most tangible and direct evidence of climate change. Up to 80 percent of the glacier volume in the Hindu Kush and Himalayas could vanish in this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t drastically cut, a 2023 report warned.
It hasn’t snowed in Upper Mustang for nearly three years, a dire blow for those living and farming in high-altitude villages. Snowfall traditionally sets the seasonal calendar, determining when crops of barley, buckwheat, and potatoes are planted and affecting the health of grazing livestock.
“It is critically important,” Maharjan said.
For Samjung, the drought and mounting losses began around the turn of the century. Traditional mud homes built for a dry, cold mountain climate fell apart as monsoon rains grew more intense — a shift scientists link to climate change. The region’s steep slopes and narrow valleys funnel water into flash floods that destroyed homes and farmland, triggering a wave of migration that began a decade ago.
Finding a place for a new village
Moving a village — even one with fewer than 100 residents like Samjung — was no simple endeavor. They needed reliable access to water and nearby communities for support during disasters. Relocating closer to winding mountain roads would allow villagers to market their crops and benefit from growing tourism. Eventually, the king of Mustang, who still owns large tracts of land in the area nearly two decades after Nepal abolished its monarchy, provided suitable land for a new village.
Pemba Gurung, 18, and her sister Toshi Lama Gurung, 22, don’t remember much about the move from their old village. But they remember how hard it was to start over. Families spent years gathering materials to build new mud homes with bright tin roofs on the banks of the glacial Kali Gandaki river, nearly 15 kilometers (9 miles) away. They constructed shelters for livestock and canals to bring water to their homes. Only then could they move.
Some villagers still herd sheep and yak, but life is a bit different in New Samjung, which is close to Lo Manthang, a medieval walled city cut off from the world until 1992, when foreigners were first allowed to visit. It’s a hub for pilgrims and tourists who want to trek in the high mountains and explore its ancient Buddhist culture, so some villagers work in tourism.
The sisters Pemba and Toshi are grateful not to have to spend hours fetching water every day. But they miss their old home.
“It is the place of our origin. We wish to go back. But I don’t think it will ever be possible,” said Toshi.