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 seriously liked Mohsin Hamid’s novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and although I’ve not read his other two novels – The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Moth Smoke – I have just read Discontent & Its Civilizations, a collection of ‘Dispatches from Lahore, N...
For years I’ve been meaning to visit Hampi, the extensive city of temple ruins in the state of Karnataka. It’s an overnight train trip from the southern metropolis of Bangalore or a slightly shorter trip from Goa on the coast, the difficulties of getting there perhaps...
My recent visit to Ratnagiri, following the sad story of King Thibaw’s long spell in exile, concluded with the last day of Ganesh Chaturthi, the 10-day birthday party for the elephant-headed Hindu God of Wisdom. ▲ As a finale images of the God are carried down to t...
Aung San Suu Kyi wasn’t the first Burmese leader to spend a long time under house arrest. The 100th anniversary of the death of King Thibaw, the last ruler of the Kingdom of Burma, arrives on 19 December 2016. King Thibaw endured 30 years of exile in Ratnagiri after h...
Last week I discovered the best HK$50 (A$8, US$6.50, £5, €6) buy in Hong Kong. The cursing grannies. They hang out under the Canal Rd Underpass in Wan Chai: For your HK$50 they will curse and hit any villain you care to suggest. Your horrible boss, your cheating...
Brutalism in Britain is often seen as post-World War II architecture at its worst. A period of heavy, foreboding, grey, often sinister looking buildings, a style at its peak in the ‘60s. No British buildings better symbolize the Brutalist movement than the Barbican Es...
◄ Cortina – one of those very swish-looking Italian alpine towns, a place that simply looks expensive! It was the last stop on my recent France and Italy circuit. Way back in 1971 on the first Europe trip Maureen and I ever made we camped just north of Cortina in D...
My recent France and Italy drive continued from Grosseto to Venice. Of course Venice was as beautiful as ever … ▲ Whether you were looking across the lagoon to the Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore on the island of San Maggiore at sunset ▲ Or, a little later, direc...
After our visit to Aix-en-Provence in France my little European foray continued to flashy Portofino and on down to Grosseto, in the southern corner of Tuscany, heading towards Rome. The city has a fine cathedral, remnants of the city walls and an interesting museum. ...
Marianne Ihlen – the Marianne to whom Leonard Cohen said ‘So Long’ to all those years ago – died on 29 July. I’ve just read today’s story in The Guardian on a final letter Cohen wrote to her, knowing she would soon be gone. It was Marianne who inspired ‘Hey, That's No...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013