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.
I’ve just looked at aerial views – since I’m unlikely to be looking out of aircraft windows again for a spell – so let’s look at hotels as well. My most recent hotel – a bit over four weeks ago, was the Novetel Cairo Airport, my second airport Novetel in the past year...
▲ This one sums up the problem, I was in transit through a very empty Hong Kong airport on my way to Wakayama. On Sunday 16 February the coronavirus hadn’t kicked into high gear. But it soon would. ▲ It looks like it’s going to be a while before I’m looking out of ...
Lonely Planet’s Italian partners EDT have put out a new guidebook – well the cover at least – for the place we will probably be doing most of our travel in the coming weeks (or months): Home. It features – Tips from the experts – The secrets of the locality – Recom...
Before returning to Australia for a statutory 14 day spell of self-isolation I was on the Yemeni Island of Socotra, staying in its main town, Hadibou. Socotra has been described as the ‘Galapagos of the Indian Ocean,’ but it’s the plant life which is of greatest inter...
Hadibou – the largest town on Socotra Island and the capital of the island's eastern district – was my base while I travelled around that fascinating Yemen Island. ▲ The Central Mosque – I heard rather too much of this mosque during my stay in Hadibou. That’s the v...
‘Want to go to Socotra?’ my friend Simon Calder, eccentric travel editor for the London Independent, asked me in May last year. ‘Absolutely,’ I replied. I mean, what self-respecting traveller wouldn’t want to go to Socotra? ‘Right,’ said Simon. ‘Just send £800 a...
A Wakayama University conference on Overtourism – Tourism in Troubled Times – took me to Japan and, on the side, a little exploration of the Kii Peninsula. That’s the finger of Japan pointing south from big city Osaka and cultural centre Kyoto, down to Cape Shionomisa...
I drove up to Shepparton, a town almost exactly 200km (125 miles) almost exactly north of Melbourne in Australia to visit the Shepparton Motor Museum. With a few other interested Melburnians I’ve been kicking around the idea of establishing a Melbourne Transport Museu...
It’s rumoured that Donald Trump is about to add seven countries to his visa hit list. I’ve been to all but one of them, five of them in the last five years. 2018 07 – Belarus – yeah, I know it’s ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’, but I found it thoroughly interesting an...
I flew Qantas flight QF9 Melbourne to London last year and QF10 back. I won’t be doing it again. Flying non-stop for 17+ hours from Perth to London is the first of a number of Qantas ‘Project Sunrise’ flights which could one day link Sydney and Melbourne on the Austra...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013