Karin Muller

Who is Karin Muller?

Karin Muller is a Swiss-born author, filmmaker, photographer, and adventurer. Muller set out in the 1990s to travel the world's historic highways. She is an expert lecturer on Japan for the National Geographic Society, has been featured on National Public Radio and Minnesota Public Radio's Marketplace, and her writing appears in National Geographic and Traveler magazines.

Her first expedition took her to the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam, which enabled her to produce a PBS television special, Hitchhiking Vietnam, and a companion book by Globe Pequot Press of the same name.

Her second expedition took her to the Inca Road, a four-thousand-mile trek from Quito, Ecuador to Santiago, Chile resulting in a television series, Along the Inca Road for National Geographic and a book published by the Adventure Press.

Muller's third adventure took her to Japan, where she lived with a pre-Buddhist mountain ascetic cult, joined a samurai-mounted archery team, and completed a 1,300-kilometer pilgrimage around Shikoku. This journey was published in Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa, as both a documentary series and book. She took no camera crew or companions, or even much money, and went on foot and emerged profoundly changed and understanding more, but also realized as a "typical" American she could not really become Japanese.