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.
It’s a 5 am start on the trip to the Minaret of Jam, which means we see the sun rise half an hour down the road. The early departure is a good idea, the 289km trip takes nearly 15 hours on consistently rough roads. There’s plenty to see along the way, a wide flat vall...
I’m heading straight to Herat because I’ve got to fly there and back and don’t want to risk getting stuck at the end of the trip. All the road routes are either downright dangerous (ie via Kandahar) or difficult and possibly dangerous (ie via Mazar-i-Sharif or straigh...
My flight from Dubai is pretty much on time, despite the rumours about cancelled flights and the tales that UN staff are not allowed to fly Kam Air. Big deal, a US embassy guy I found myself next to in the check in line told me they weren’t allowed to fly Ariana Afgha...
Yesterday it was communist dictator Enver Hoxha's museum, today it's a kid's slide I’m kicking around Europe’s last forgotten corner. Communism finally collapsed in this tiny country a couple of years after it had fallen apart in the rest of Europe. E...
Iraq Practicalities You would have to be crazy to visit central or southern Iraq and even the north is not for beginners but if you did want to go, here’s how to do it: Visas Officially any visitor to Iraq needs a visa and they are not available on arrival, even ...
Blogging Across Iraq I’m in Iraq. No, this is not some sort of ‘dangerous places’ mission, the south and centre of the country may be war zones but the north, the Kurdistan region of Iraq is, so I’m told, quite peaceful. Not at all like the rest of the country. The f...
Cashing a Travellers Cheque Ever wondered why travellers cheques are dying out? I’ve been carrying my last four American Express US$100 TCs round for several years now without ever finding a reason to cash them. Observing a Nepalese friend trying to cash one in Melbo...
13-16 March - Earthquake Zone The 7.8 on the Richter Scale earthquake which hit north-eastern Pakistan on 8 October last year killed 73,000 people, damaged or destroyed 80% of the buildings in large parts of the zone and left three million people homeless. The Lo...
Phuket – Hotel Wildlife, Hotel Guests & Scuba Diving I joked in Once While Travelling about the ‘hotel wildlife’ I’ve encountered over the years – the rats, mice and cockroaches which shoestring travel in the developing world sometimes bring you face to face with...
I’ve watched 747s being put together in Seattle, Mazdas roll down the assembly line in Hiroshima and seen far too much beer in production, so when I was in the English midlands I decided to drop in on the Mini production line just outside Oxford. Maureen and I have on...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013