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.
The film Jirga recently took me back to Afghanistan and now Wajib takes me on a quick return trip to Nazareth, the Palestinian centre in Israel. A wajib is an obligation, not an absolute necessity, that’s a fard, but something you should do. Like deliver invitations f...
I finally got around to reading Robert Macfarlane’s much acclaimed (and best selling) walking account – the ‘Book of the Year’ for many critics. Much of the The Old Ways follows the old routes of Britain, including offshore routes both by boat and on foot. That includ...
A weird relationship isn’t it? Underlined yet again by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut. The USA gun illustration is on the wall at the front of the ex-US Embassy in Tehran, Iran. I live part of the year in Australia (annual deaths by guns...
I’m chairing the panel of judges for the 2012 Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award, the annual award for the best British travel book. Currently I’m working through the entries with my fellow judges Sarah Spankie of Conde Nast Traveller magazine, Susie Dowdall the Boo...
Every now and then I bump into somebody who’s busy trekking around the world putting a ‘been there’ tick beside a list of every country in the world. You can have arcane arguments about what ‘been there’ means – is the airport transit lounge good enough? But the start...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013