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 flew in to China from San Francisco to Beijing, took another flight to Taiyuan, continued by train to Pingyao, made a little bicycle side trip out to the Shangluin Temple and then tracked back to Beijing. The first leg was by car back to Taiyuan, stopping en rou...
The temple is a sidetrip from Pingyao, get there by bus, taxi or, in my case, rent a bicycle and pedal the 7 km to the village. ▲ The temple’s multi-armed Bodhisattva statue. And me! Dating back to 1571 the temple is packed with Song and Yuan painted statues, all...
I flew San Francisco to Beijing, then my first stop was Taiyuan, next up was Pingyao – ‘China’s best-preserved ancient walled town’ according to my Lonely Planet China guide. ▲ It is indeed quite a wall, it stretches for over 6 km, punctuated by no less than 72 w...
After flying San Francisco to Beijing I set off on a little trip around Shanxi province. China today is amazingly easy to travel around, everything from getting on a flight to finding the right train, jumping on a bus to booking a hotel seems to work! ▲ So I jump...
Took United Flight 889 from San Francisco to Beijing, a flight that arcs way north, crossing Alaska and reaching just south of the Arctic Circle then crossing Siberia, across the Sea of Okhotsk (where the Russians shot down a straying Korean Airlines 747, killing all ...
◄ And amazingly it's in the US, the home of general security insanity. Arriving at security at San Francisco International Airport I encountered this sign, inviting you to empty your water bottle, take the empty bottle through security and refill it from a water foun...
It was my first trip back to the San Francisco Bay Area since 2009 and I’ve noted some interesting bicycles I encountered. ▲ Lots of other things hadn’t changed at all, the sunset view out over the Pacific Ocean from the Beach Chalet Restaurant was the same as ev...
I haven’t been back to the San Francisco Bay Area since 2009, this trip I’ve noticed a few new bicycles. Starting with the Bay Area Bike Share scheme. ▲ I’m pretty sure it’s the same Montreal designed bicycles-locking stations-software system that I’m also famili...
▲ Kabul from my Kam Air Boeing 737-200 When I flew to Afghanistan a few years ago it was on an elderly Kam Air Boeing 737-200. Well that’s soon to change, on 4 April 2013 Emirates will start daily services from Dubai to Kabul. Making Afghanistan yet another count...
Patrick Smith’s Ask the Pilot was “everything you need to know about flying before you click the ‘book now’ button. “ Now he’s followed it up with Cockpit Confidential: more questions, more answers, but equally important more reflections. Patrick may be a hard-nosed ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013