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.
Day 6 and the next stage of my London to Australia flight should have been from the Greek island of Crete to Alexandria in Egypt. Except when we got to the airport we couldn’t take off. Either we weren’t allowed to depart Greece or we weren’t allowed to arrive in Egyp...
We’re flying back to Australia with a small group of fellow travellers in a small plane, a Beechcraft 1900D for you plane spotters. The trip will take nearly four weeks and stop at 22 places along the way, some of them for just a brief look around or a refuelling stop...
Last year I stopped at the lonely site on the west coast of Ireland where the first trans-Atlantic flight concluded in 1919. The aircraft was an ungainly Vickers Vimy, a canvas, wood and wire World War I biplane. Later I went to look at that very aircraft in London’s ...
▲ Gauguins in Moscow's Pushkin Museum My lengthy stay in London concluded with a visit to the Gauguin exhibition at the Tate Modern. I’ve made lots of visits to French Polynesia, including working on a couple of editions of our Tahiti & French Polynesia guid...
It was our final continental excursion during a long visit to London, a trip to Rome where Maureen and I were speaking at the Festival della letteratura di Viaggio (Travel Literature Festival). The festival took place at the Palazzetto Mattei at the Villa Celimontana,...
I’ve not yet visited Congo, but it’s certainly on my list. Meanwhile I seem to keep reading books on that troubled country. The latest is Bryan Mealer’s All Things Must Fight to Live which was recommended to me at a Human Rights Watch briefing on Congo I went to a cou...
The statistics show that Spain has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe. Wander the streets of Madrid in the evening and it would seem impossible. Catering to all those people in all those cafes, bars, clubs and restaurants should guarantee full employment,...
I returned to Corsica for my first visit since I went there in 1998 to work on the very first edition of Corsica, we’re now up to Corsica Edition 5. One thing certainly hasn’t changed in 12 years, this is still an incredibly beautiful and varied island Our first ...
▲ Crossing Chelsea Bridge just after midnight I’ve been doing a lot of cycling in and out of London. I reported on my Boris Biking experiences, the new London bicycle share scheme. Correctly it’s the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme and I’ve racked up about 10 hours of...
If you’re in Italy in June through August there’s no better place to be than Verona for the annual opera festival. The operas take place in the ancient Roman amphitheatre, the Arena di Verona. It’s a magical place, the performances kick off at 9 pm and often continu...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013