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.
Will I ever escape from Afghanistan? I recently put a little money into an organisation which is still trying to do something useful for female education in the country. Tell us why you’re doing this, they said, and I wrote ‘I seem to be unable to get away from Afghan...
One of the pleasures of my travels these days is often encountering projects our foundation – Planet Wheeler – or in my Lonely Planet days the Lonely Planet Foundation – has been involved with. In April in Nairobi, Kenya I visited the amazing Food4Education project ru...
▲ I visited Albania in 2006 and wrote about it in my now-well-out-of-date book Bad Lands. I trekked back to Albania in September 2024, accompanied this time by an international group of friends. Wow, things have changed. In Skanderberg Square in the centre of the cap...
I’ve been reading tourism related books of late, starting with Paige McClanahan’s very interesting book The New Tourist. I talked at length with Paige when she was working on the book, so Maureen and I feature in the intro chapter, along with Rick Steves, Mark Ellingh...
My travels in Nigeria included time as a typical tourist – particularly in Lagos and Kano – even though tourists are very few and far between in Africa’s largest country in terms of population. Nigeria already has more than 200 million people and it appears to be head...
I spend a lot of time riding the tube, the London subway system, when I’m in London. I’ve got familiar lines – the Piccadilly Line (I’m not an enthusiast), the District Line (much better), the Victoria Line, the Jubilee Line. ▲ And familiar stations, starting wit...
With a group of friends Maureen and I spent a few days in Cornwall, the ever popular – with tourists – south-west corner of the United Kingdom. A long time ago we made the trek to Lands End, the very furthermost end of England, and we’ve made a couple of other trips t...
Last year I spent several days walking the first 50-plus miles – 90km – of the Thames Path, the 184 miles (294km) route along the River Thames from its source to the Thames Barrage, east of London. That walk took me from the source to the university town of Oxford. ...
Most of my recent Nigerian travels were with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) although I did see a fair amount on the road – or in the air. I noted in my recent post on South Sudan that I was visiting places where the western government travel advisories were essentiall...
Having started my African travels in Nairobi I continued north to Lake Turkana in Kenya and then crossed in to South Sudan, mainly spending my time in the Boma and Bandingilo National Parks. Next stop Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country in terms of population, but certa...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013