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.
▲ Our Karakoram Highway (KKH) trip from Islamabad in Pakistan to Kashgar in China certainly provided some great images, like this one of a very dangerous looking Pakistani petrol tanker. ◄ Pakistan’s often very modern petrol stations regularly advertised that t...
Two stories in the British newspapers today caught my attention. Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic leap from space and the death of King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. ◄ In 1999 I was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with photographer Richard I’Anson working on our coffee tabl...
Having chaired the panel of judges for this year’s Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award – Wild Coast the well-deserved winner – I thought I should read the last couple of winners. The Dead Yard, Ian Thomson’s book about Jamaica, picked up the award two years ago. I...
Khunjerab Pass to Kashgar I’ve recently travelled up the Karakoram Highway through northern Pakistan to Kashgar in western China. Part 1 went from Islamabad to Gilgit. In Part 2 I continued through the Hunza Valley and up to the Khunjerab Pass, the 4724 metre high di...
You can always discover another way things can go wrong with the logistics of flying. We’re in Kashgar in the far west of China and checking in to fly Kashgar-Urumqi (everything to the far western side of China goes through Urumqi) and on to Guangzhou. From there we’l...
Gilgit to the Khunjerab Pass Maureen and I have been travelling up the Karakoram Highway (KKH) from Islamabad in Pakistan to Kashgar in China. Part 1 took us to the town of Gilgit, this report continues up to the Chinese border. ◄ Shigar Castle’s security guar...
Islamabad to Gilgit Way back in 1992 I made up a 15 line ‘must do’ list, I don’t think the word ‘bucket list’ had been invented yet. I visited Angkor Wat in Cambodia later that year and put the first tick beside the list. In 1992 Cambodia was still not a totally safe...
I’ve been in Mumbai and Delhi in India helping the newest Lonely Planet office – Lonely Planet India – launch their first 10 guidebooks ‘for the Indian Traveller.’ They’re in English, but specifically developed for the rapidly growing Indian overseas travel market. Fr...
On my last India visit in early 2010 Delhi was in chaos, the city was being torn apart as they raced to get the Delhi Metro finished in time for the Commonwealth Games. This time I got to ride the Metro and, just as for hundreds of thousands of local users every day, ...
Last year I made a stopover in Doha, the capital of Qatar, while I was travelling back from Europe to Australia. I wanted to have a look at what the site for the 2022 Football World Cup had to offer. Answer? Not much. This year, en route to India, I stopped off in ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013