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.
▲ We had a wonderfully loud and raucous restaurant evening in the village of Duoyishu, in the rice terrace area of Yuanyang. The Chinese group at the next table were ripping in to the alcohol, toasting us, generally getting more and more in to the party spirit, culmin...
We’re at Day 53 and almost across China in our long trek from Bangkok to London (well to Abingdon, where they once made MGs). Here are a few more of our China stops en route: ▲ On Day 30 we were at Huangshan, one of China’s best known mountain sites and the view fr...
We’re now at Day 52 of our Silk Road journey and en route through China we made some intriguing stops, here are a few from our arrival in China through to Day 29 of the trip. ◄ On Day 19, between Mengla near the Laotian border and Pu’er, famous for its tea, we visi...
Most of the way across China we’ve followed the ‘highways,’ toll roads where you can cover lots of kms without interruption. About 40km out of Xining heading towards Zhangye the highway ends and we follow the often twisting and turning G227 for most of the day’s 336km...
◄ It may not be totally original, like the Pingyao City Walls, but the City Walls of Xian stretch for 14km and you can rent bicycles and ride a circuit. They cost 200 RMB (about US$30) refundable deposit and 45 RMB (about US$6.50) for two hours ...
It’s wonderful that you can still find places that a. amaze you and b. you’ve never heard of before. Both of these Buddhist sites in Gansu Province in China amazed me, La Shao I had never heard of until a day before my visit ▲ Maijishan I had heard of, although onl...
▲ I visited Xian back in 1995, with Maureen, Tashi and Kieran when our children were indeed children. Well the Terracotta Warriors, Xian’s big attraction, are still a big attraction. They’ve got a much flashier and more permanent display home and the car park and asso...
I’ve been riding bikes in Shanghai and Beijing, on my MGB Silk Road trip across Asia. On my first visits to China there were lots of bicycles. Over the years the numbers went down and down, part fashion (people wanted cars) and part government policy (cars were tomorr...
◄ Most of our driving in China has been on ‘Highways’, the extensive network of toll roads which have popped up in the last couple of decades. They’re fast, generally well maintained and for the first week or so after we crossed the border from Laos often remarkably e...
Of course a lot of our Silk Road travel – and we don’t even really start on the Silk Road until we get to Xian – is actually on the road. Part 1 of some ‘on the road’ shots. The trip has featured in . ▲ We can pack out a petrol/gas station up when we all pull in to...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013