If you really want to know your Earth, grab your spirit of adventure and let's go!
Your adventure travel guide for getting to know your Earth
CopyrightNEW!! Historical novel "The Dancer In Beirut" by Dr. Thomas E. Muller is now available in paperback or E-book on Amazon:

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WELCOME TO. . .KnowYourEarth.net

A website that’s aimed at you, the adventure traveler.
Earth is the Solar System's grandest planet;
a myriad surprises await to be explored.Have you ever. . .sensed your Planet Earth?

HAVE YOU. . .

Seen total silence?

Tasted the rainforest?

Heard the coral reef's colors?

Smelled the desert sand dunes?

Touched the light from a billion stars?
Opposite end of Earth from Antarctic Circle:
Bathurst Inlet, Nunavut, at the Arctic CircleHow well do you know your Home Planet?

Earth awaits you. She is the only planet you will ever experience first hand. This website was created by Tom Muller to encourage travelers to gain a thorough knowledge of their home planet---not just its cities and countries and political divisions. Let Earth surprise you with her astonishing variety of climate, terrain, wildlife, and way of life in human habitats.

The vast majority of humanity does not know the Home Planet. Just about every corner of Earth has been discovered and explored, yet humans in one corner do not know other corners. Often, there are hindering factors: economic limitations, poor health, ignorance, fear of the unknown, a lack of travel know-how, anxiety about language barriers and strange cultures, or a low interest in travel. For those who can surmount such travel barriers, Earth is yours to be discovered, on the surface and just beneath the waves.
I pay my respects at Shackleton's
grave in Grytviken, South GeorgiaIn 2004, the idea occurred to me that, to truly experience the amazing range
of Earth's physical, natural and cultural dimensions, one needs to have a
systematic travel plan---visit every 10-degree-wide slice of longitude and every
10-degree-wide band of latitude. This would include visiting Earth’s remotest
and most difficult-to-reach destinations in order to complete such a challenge.
I named it the Know Your Earth Travel Challenge. And when you have taken
up this challenge, your deeper appreciation of Earth will be your precious
reward---your planetary prize.


English poet Robert Browning's words are inscribed on the granite block marking
Antarctic explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton's, grave in Grytviken, on the island of
South Georgia, where the marker faces towards Shackleton's beloved Antarctica:

"I hold---that a man should strive to the uttermost for his life's set prize."

This website presents the Know Your Earth Travel Challenge as a formula for
experiencing the astounding diversity of what Planet Earth can offer the adventure
traveler. The website will grow, as I capture my impressions of the slices visited,
and strive to the utmost in encouraging and enticing you, too, to push your planetary
horizons to the very limit.
Iceberg in Karrat Fjord, on
Greenland's west coastI hope adventure travelers will find this system of experiencing Earth useful and be guided by the Know Your Earth Travel Challenge. I invite website visitors to write me about their own efforts to achieve a travel goal, based on geographic and cultural coverage, and to offer their ideas and suggestions.

In 2018, the highly sophisticated website for extreme travellers, www.nomadmania.com
(click on link to go directly to their site) adopted my idea for geographic coverage and it is now one of their yardsticks for experiencing our Planet. They call it the KYE list (Know Your Earth list) of 434 "quadrants," based on latitude and longitude, each quadrant covering an area of 10 degrees of latitude by 10 degrees of longitude---wherever there is land to stand on. This level of geographic coverage is very extensive and challenging. Nomad Mania currently has 8,500 members, aged between 9 and 80+.
Young-at-heart adventurers catch
the trade winds in their sailsHistory's first solo round-the-world sailor, Sir Francis Chichester said,
"To a man with imagination, a map is a window to adventure."

To which I would add, a map is also the door to adventure.

And Mark Twain put it this way:
"Twenty years from now, you will be more
disappointed by the things you didn't do,
than by the ones you did do. So, throw off
the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover."
Monkey-spotting in the Amazon
jungle near the Peru-Bolivia borderI offer some thoughts for website visitors:

Everywhere you venture in your travels, offer something of yourself to the local people you meet. In turn, allow yourself to be enriched by those you've touched while visiting their lands, their homes, their workshops, their schools.

One of my sensory delights is standing outdoors, arms outstretched, with a lively wind blowing in my face, its fluctuating roar thundering past my ears. It reminds me of distant horizons visited and new ones beckoning to be investigated. And it is the harbinger of interesting things on their way.

Now that I am in the twilight of life, there is still so much to envision, attempt and accomplish; life is far too short for the mind's myriad imagined possibilities. For every possibility, there is a treasure chest of challenges. And how is the travel imagination fired up? By reading and knowing, ahead of time, a society's source of historical, cultural and geographic pride.
With China's newest generation at a Shekou
kindergarten in Guangdong ProvinceTo a younger audience, I would say this. Take the time and make a thorough effort to know who you are and what you are capable of---psychologically and physiologically. Know yourself: Nosce te ipsum. Or gnôthi seautón, as the Greeks inscribed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Discover your strengths; uncover your hidden talents---you will be inspired by what you find---and mold your aims and life goals around these strengths. Then you can rise above detractors who ask, “Who do you think you are?” by replying, “I don’t think who I am; I know who I am.”

As for myself, I was given good genes and they’ve been put to work for me. In return, I pay them handsome dividends: they get well trained in the lessons of life and they will reach the future, long after I am gone.