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 love absurd travel suggestions – ones you read and you think ‘where on earth did that come from?’ The Australian newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald featured a travel enquiry:
• If the only flight option is Ryanair, should we ditch that destination?
A couple were looking at a visit to Sardinia (good idea), but were contemplating scrapping the whole plan if it required flying with Ryanair. Michael Gebicki, the paper’s ‘Tripologist,’ answered the query with an absolute straight face, suggesting the possibility of flying with Wizz Air (now there is an airline I have had really bad experiences with) or taking a seven to eight hour ferry ride (well that could be fun), but never hinting at why anybody might hate Ryanair so much that they’d abandon a trip rather than board one of Michael O’Leary’s 737s.
Over the years I’ve taken Ryanair on quite a few occasions and they’ve always done exactly what they promised, got you there safely and relatively comfortably (OK the seats don’t recline, big deal for short flights?), didn’t lose my luggage and ran to schedule. The only Ryanair flight I’ve taken which was somewhat delayed was totally down to bad weather, you could see it out the window, and the pilot kept us informed on why things weren’t going to plan. Something which I’ve had too much experience of not happening on other airlines. And of course, underline this, Ryanair are cheap. Sometimes amazingly cheap.
▲ Equally important Ryanair – or rather Michael O’Leary – are often hilariously funny. Take their recent dispute with Elon Musk. Mr Tesla got angry with Ryanair for not installing Starlink Wi-Fi access on their aircraft. O’Leary suggested Musk was an idiot and ran a ‘Big Idiot’ seat sale. Wonderful. It’s not surprising The Economist suggested Ryanair might be the world’s most successful airline.
Then, at the other end of the cost spectrum, there’s Remote Travel. Now I have never taken a Remote Travel trip, but I’m on their mailing list and their trips often look fantastic. And often look absurd! Check their 15-day Everest Base Camp trip, a mere US$29,000 out of Kathmandu. I’ve done the Everest Base Camp trip and had a wonderful time, but certainly not in the comfort Remote Travel can offer. Take their trip and if at some point along the route up to the base camp your feet get a bit tired you snap your fingers and a helicopter pops down to save you walking for the rest of the afternoon. Even if you’re not in the market for helicopter hiking check their website, the pictures are terrific.
Algeria, it’s been on my ‘wish list,’ my ‘must do’ list for far too long and I finally got around to it. Two weeks in Algeria, a week in the North – big cities, the coast, Roman ruins – and then another week in the South – exploring the Sahara desert from Djanet, clos...
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 enj...
▲ Twin Islands, Hogan Group in Bass Strait Back in 2019 I visited Erith Island in Bass Strait, the often stormy waters that separates the Australian state of Victoria from the island state of Tasmania. I was working on my National Library of Australia book Tony Whe...
After Kea (a remarkably unspoilt Greek Island) and Jamaica I made a short visit to another Greek island – Hydra. Now Hydra has been on my ‘must do’ list for far too long and I’d really like to go back. It’s not as far off the beaten tourist track as Kea, but it’s cert...
For some reason I’d never been there, pretty much everywhere else in the Caribbean, Haiti twice, Cuba three times, I’d even spent part of my childhood in the Bahamas, but somehow Jamaica evaded me. Not any more, I did almost a circuit, arriving in Kingston and depa...
It’s the furthest north of the Cyclades Island group and more a Greek holiday destination than a foreign one. In fact if you want reassurance that overtourism has not taken over the world then Kea is a good place to come. This is not Mykonos, Santorini or even Hydra. ...
Wow – that Donald Trump – aka Taco Trump, Dog-E Trump, Liz Trump, Tariffs Trump – he keeps on providing travel inspiration. Only a couple of weeks ago I suggested ‘Donald (Taco) Trump presents the best travel list since Bush’s Axis of Evil’ when he came up with his 12...
Wow, another presidential travel challenge. I wrote my book Bad Lands, published back in 2007, because George W Bush had proclaimed Iran, Iraq and North Korea as his ‘Axis of Evil’ and, of course, I thought ‘well I want to go there.’ I added Afghanistan, Albania, Cuba...
All the airline routes that follow are from FlightRadar24’s wonderful website. I commented recently on Ryanair 4978 from Athens, Greece to Vilnius, Lithuania doing a little westward jog approaching or departing Vilnius to avoid crossing Belarus airspace. That’s a r...
My recent blog – I’m Not Going There Anymore – soon raised other possibilities for a ‘no go’ list. I should agree immediately that this is a change of attitude for me. For a long time I’ve thought we should go anywhere, it’s important for all sorts of reasons that we ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013