<p>The first thing you need to ask yourself is: do you want to be an explorer or an adventurer?</p>
<p>An adventurer is (according to the explorer Benedict Allen) similar to an athlete. Adventurers do difficult feats for their own sake; they are not particularly interested in discovering a place. For instance, Sir Edmund Hillary (who led the first expedition to the summit of Mount Everest) was an adventurer.
You don’t need particularly many qualifications to be an adventurer. You need to have A LOT of experience in your mode of traveling (whether it’s mountain climbing, foot expedition, kayaking, etc.) Also, be aware adventuring is hard to make into a lucrative job; you may have to do it as a hobby and get another job on the side.</p>
<p>On the other hand, an explorer is not necessarily interested in going to places that people have gone before. Explorers discover new things about environments and cultures by visiting them and studying them in more depth than anyone has before. Most of the people who make documentaries for the discovery channel or write articles for National Geographic are this kind of explorer. For instance, you might travel to the Amazon to study the languages, culture, and philosophy of the indigenous peoples there. Or, you might travel to Madagascar to research a little-known species of lemur.
As for qualifications, explorers usually have an in depth knowledge in one field. This field might be almost anything: biology, environmental science, geography, linguistics, anthropology, maritime science, folklore…If you want to be an explorer, you should definitely get a BA in a topic you’re interested in, and possibly go on to do a stint at grad school, but only if you want to have a very specialized knowledge of your topic. Also, if you specialize in some fields, you will be given chances to explore by virtue of your occupation itself. Most anthropologists are expected to do field work in foreign locales, for instance, and certain types of biologists as well.</p>
<p>One of the most important ways to earn a living for an explorer or adventurer is to communicate your findings. Communication is a very important skill for an explorer! Most explorers/adventurers write books, take photographs, and film documentaries. You can sell these to magazines or television stations freelance, or you can get a job with a station or magazine and always send you stuff back to them. </p>
<p>As for your chances getting a job, being an explorer/adventurer is difficult, but if you stick to it and don’t give up, you have a good chance of succeeding at it. Many explorers/adventurers end up exploring as a hobby. Like any creative and difficult job, you probably will run into a lot of pitfalls along the way. But stick to it, keep working at, and you can be one.</p>
<p>Finally, I would say the best thing you can do to be an explorer/adventurer is explore–start now! Whether you live in the country or in the city, you have things to explore that no one has ever discovered before. Try writing, filming, or photographing your findings.</p>
<p>I hope this all helps, and good luck with your own exploration!</p>