By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
I’ve recorded several podcasts, interviews, conversations recently.
At London Business School Maureen and I recorded Journeys, a conversation with Rajesh Chandy the Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Developing World at the Wheeler Institute. People seemed to enjoy it, someone suggested that we ‘looked like two teenagers our to start an exciting adventure,’ not business like at all.
With Tyrel Cameron Eskelson I talked on his Interlocutor podcast about my travel life, starting in Pakistan when I was a small child right up to travel in recent weeks and for the rest of 2025.
Brazilians certainly believe in eating – and drinking – my recent Brazil visit included plenty of both. Vento Haragano is one São Paulo’s biggest (and priciest) churrascaria places, this is the Argentinian meat, meat and more meat diet. A veritable stampede of ...
My Brazil visit concluded with five days in São Paulo, the biggest city in Brazil and with a population of around 20 million one of the biggest in the world. It was a working visit so I didn’t get much chance to look around, but I was surprised that it was a much easi...
The original capital of Portugal’s Brazil colony, until it was shifted to Rio in 1763, colonial Salvador was a glittering city of wealthy mansions and gold-leafed churches. It’s still a dazzling city although today it’s a crumbling and ragged glory. It reminded me of ...
▲ On the Cacimba do Padre beach with brown boobies perching on a rock Sitting at a beach café, sipping a caipirinha, watching the sun set and trying not to be distracted by the girls on the beach in their fio dental, dental floss bikinis. Well someone’s got to d...
I thought I’d read quite enough about the January 2009 US Airways flight which ended up in the Hudson River in New York, but I was given a copy of this book and couldn’t put it down. William Langewiesche has written widely on aviation topics (amongst other things). H...
I’m not a bird watcher – I’ve never kept lists of birds I’ve seen or set off on trips where spotting birds is the most important part of the journey. Nevertheless there are lots of places I’ve been (Ethiopia, Kenya, Mongolia, Costa Rica and the Falkland Islands for st...
No country in South-East Asia is as cut off from the outside world as Burma. It’s a combination of the country’s own deliberate isolation and international sanctions. As a result this is the only country in the region where McDonalds has yet to arrive. Nor will you fi...
▲ Road to Mandalay My recent Burma travels took me from Bagan to Mandalay, with assorted stops along the way, on the Road to Mandalay. The riverboat started life on the Rhine in Europe before being shifted to Burma by the Orient Express company in 1995. ▲ B...
My Burma trip included a return visit to Mandalay, my first visit was 36 years ago in 1974! Despite many changes over the years – Mandalay is regularly cited as the city where Chinese economic influence is most evident – it’s still an extraordinarily Buddhist city and...
▲ Tony at Pindaya North of Burma’s Inle Lake and Heho, the Shan State airport town, Pindaya makes a good escape from the tourist crowds (as much as Burma ever gets tourist crowds) and hustle of Inle Lake. It’s a good centre for walks into the surrounding hills, ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013