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 always interesting when your travels take you somewhere which doesn’t turn up on an internet search. In English at least, there’s probably lots to be said about Ebao (or E Bao or Ebuzhen) in Chinese. We stopped for lunch in Ebao on Day 47 of my recent Silk Roa...
Yogi Berra, that famous source of folk wisdom (I think he played baseball as well), noted that ‘You can observe a lot by just watching.’ You certainly can, I felt that over and over again on my Silk Road trip from Bangkok to London earlier this year. None of the Centr...
I played a small part in Lonely Planet’s new Epic Drives of the World book, each chapter features a longer report on one ‘epic drive’ and three smaller features on related drives. ▲ The shattered tyre is a reminder of what can happen if you don’t take care of them ...
Oh you’re ‘climbing the wall’ – fan qiang – the Chinese journalist commented. I was indeed, I was using a VPN – Virtual Private Network – to ‘climb over the Great Firewall of China.’ China is the most notorious of the countries in the world which spend a great deal...
I’m another enthusiast for those classic British folding bikes, the Brompton. I’ve clearly had mine for a long time, here’s a comparison between my Brompton and two other bikes in my small collection, from nine years ago. The other day I went for a ride on a new Br...
And it’s in French! Lonely Planet France has just published a guide to 500 great bicycle rides in France. Rides suitable for people from 7 to 77 they claim, whether you want rides with friends or family, by yourself or with your lover – well it is French bicycle ridin...
The Leighton House Museum in the London suburb of Kensington (very close to the new Design Museum) has a wonderful exhibit on the art of Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema running until 29 October. It’s ‘the largest exhibition in London since 1913’ on his art and makes an inter...
The final stage of our Silk Road trip felt like it was going to be a race to the finish, we would exit Asia by crossing the Dardanelles from Asian Turkey to European Turkey, enter the European Union as we crossed from Turkey into Bulgaria, then make a quick sprint to ...
▲ By Day 88 my Silk Road trip had less than two weeks to run, that morning we’d started in Cappadocia, stopped to visit the huge caravanserai in Sultanhani and paused for lunch in Konya. The Mevlâna Museum, dedicated to Celaleddin Rumi (Sufism, whirling dervishes) is ...
My 103 day, Silk Road Odyssey from Bangkok to London in an old MGB is all over. ‘Burgundy,’ my 45-year-old car is safely in London and I’m looking for a new home for it, anyone want a well looked after English sports car? Comprehensively overhauled and then used for o...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013