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.
From our Little French Trip we continued on into Italy for a short stop at Portofino, just south of Genoa. This is the Italian Riviera at its most luxurious, way back in 2001 I spent a couple of days on this coast walking the Cinque Terre coastal track. It was wonderf...
While I was in Aix on my recent France trip we made a little excursion to Château La Coste in Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, close to the town. The winery, restaurant and art complex is owned by Belfast-born Paddy McKinnen who had a colourful tussle for control of London’s C...
En route to the Chernobyl reactor and the ghost town of Pripyat we made a short detour to an amazing Cold War site. Here’s my diary entry: ‘a fascinating diversion to the Duga-3 early detection array (aka Russian Woodpecker), where the Russians watched out for missile...
I really liked Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story and I’m weirdly fascinated by any country that ends in ‘-stan’ – I’ve been to a few of them – so his earlier novel Absurdistan looked like a certainty. Sure enough the vulgar misadventures of the grossly overw...
Having returned from Kiev and Chernobyl with my radiation levels under control I set off for a driving trip through France and Italy with a group of friends. ▲ First it was Eurotunnel under the Channel then along the autoroute to Gevrey Chambertin. ◄ Yes we’...
My recent travels to Ukraine featured a couple of days in Kiev, as well as pointing a gieger counter at Reactor 4 at Chernobyl. Kiev’s a surprisingly attractive city and there’s plenty to occupy a few days. ▲ Plenty of glittering Orthodox churches and cathedral...
Or Chornobyl? That’s the Ukrainian spelling and that’s where the deadly nuclear reactor is located. Chernobly is the Russian spelling. Ditto for Kyiv (Ukrainian) and Kiev (Russian) ◄ I’m standing outside Reactor 4 and holding up a Geiger counter to show that I’m qu...
Remember hovercraft? Those air-cushion vehicles or ACVs were going to take over the world at one point, but today there’s only one passenger carrying service remaining. Until this week my last hovercraft trip was between Macau and Hong Kong 30 years ago. We’d got stuc...
I was at the British Museum to see Destruction of Memory, director/producer Tim Slade’s heartbreaking documentary about the recent cycle of destruction of historic monuments. The film – click here for a trailer – looks at the most recent outrages, the museum in Mos...
Last weekend in London I talked travel, business, Wheeler Foundation and Lonely Planet on Share Radio, in between playing eight favourite tracks on their Track Record spot. Click here for a podcast of the hour-long programme. For some reason most of music seemed to...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013