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.
Using your home country mobile phone when you’re overseas – roaming – can be extraordinarily expensive, particularly when it comes to data charges. Of course figuring out just what it’s going to cost can also be extraordinarily difficult. I have two mobile phones, one...
In recent weeks I’ve stayed at two favourite hotels, both of them with a heavy emphasis on art. The Imperial Hotel is a stone’s throw from Connaught Place, the centre of India’s capital New Delhi. It’s a throwback to the old Raj era and it’s simply packed wit...
I like bicycles and every time I go to India I contemplate bringing back a Hero bicycle. It could join my small (just three bikes) collection in Australia or my London bicycle – which I rode London-Paris a couple of years ago. Although in London I’m often out on B...
I’ve just left Rajasthan, the most colourful state in India. A favourite glimpse of a picture in the gallery at the Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur – it’s Maharajah Bakhat Singh watching his elephants ‘wreaking havoc.’
Maureen and I arrived at the Taj Mahal in Agra, India on our first wedding anniversary on 7 October 1972. We'd driven from London to Kabul in Afghanistan where we sold our car and were continuing east on a trip that would eventually end at Sydney in Australia. And lea...
The biggest business travel story for me at the start of 2013 was the news that Avis are buying Zipcar. I’m a big fan of the car share business and although I’ve only tried it out in Melbourne (with Flexicar) I’m a card-carrying regular with Zipcar when I’m in London....
▲ This is Virgin Blue – the Australian offshoot – not the London-based Virgin Atlantic. I flew Virgin Blue down to Tasmania a few days ago BootsnAll Travel alerted me to their new Indie website which, they claim, is the first one that lets you book Instant Pricin...
I went down to Tasmania with some friends a few days ago and managed to run into the state’s worst bush fire in years. From our holiday shack on Steele Island, about 50km east of Hobart, we could see the smoke blowing over the ridge to the north. The road to Port Arth...
On 29 December 2012 Melbourne switched completely to its Myki travel card system. If you want to travel on Melbourne public transport you need a Myki card. I’ve had mine for three years and I compared it with my London Oyster card back in early 2010. I mentioned h...
◄ Christmas tree cockatoos We get lots of birds around our place in Australia. Even though we’re only a few km from the centre of the city we see birds every day. A big, noisy flock of cockatoos descended onto a pine tree at breakfast one morning, making it look li...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013