Listen to the Wheelers

by Erik Olsen on

It’s one thing to read an article about a couple as interesting and accomplished as Tony and Maureen Wheeler, you know, of Lonely Planet fame. There was a terrific article way back when in the New Yorker that I highly suggest you read. But hearing the voices of the folks themselves and hearing them tell the story of the most famous travel book company in the world, well, that’s something else entirely. So why not go over now and listen to the Independent podcast with perhaps the most famous travel couple since..well, I can’t think of another travel couple at the moment.

No matter. The interview here is chock full of anecdotes about how the company got started, to a discussion of their multitudinous experiences from India to Oman. Also Tony’s go a book (which I just got) about traveling to the “Axis of Evil’ countries called “Bad Lands” that is due out in April.

A Year of Adventures

by Dave Luna on

Happy New Year! “So what? Broken resolutions and more taxes?” No, you cynic. That’s just disturbing.

A whole new calendar means 365 more days for adventure! If you arm yourself with Lonely Planet’s A Year of Adventures: A Guide to What, Where, and When to Do It, you’ll be prepared to hike, bungee jump, and cycle until the the first tick of 2008.

The book features over 100 adventure travel experiences in 130 countries. Also, A Year of Adventures assigns each activity to the month that is the usually the best time of year to try it out. For example, the book notes that the slopes of Mt. Yasur are at their best for volcano boarding during the first week of July.

Don’t worry, though. The activities aren’t all extreme sports adventures and challenging jungle hikes. There are less strenuous recommendations like cruising the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea and ballooning in Serengeti National Park.

I made my New Year’s Resolution after navigating through this book: “To figure out a way to get more vacation days at work.”

Lonely Planet’s Blue List

by Erik Olsen on

Here at gadling, we’re all about finding new travel ideas. And equally, we’re about pointing you to places where those ideas are most abundant. Well, where abundance is concerned, I have just closed the covers on a cornucopia of ideas that, frankly, has me feeling a little exhausted right now.

Lonely Planet’s new edition of its Blue List series is a compelling page turner that, if you’re like me, will cause an immediate shortage of yellow post-its. Those post-its now cling to the inside pages of my Blue List guide, making it look a bit like a paper peacock flattened by a semi.

The Blue List guide, subtitled “The Best in Travel 2007” provides page after page of sumptuous photos and informative text about interesting places and things to do in them all over the globe. The ideas start off with a calendar section that groups together events by month. For example, December has the Festival of the Oases in Tunisia and the Hornbill Festival in India. Chances are, you’ll have to Google these for more info, but they’re a fine start.

Other recommendations in the book are broken out by activity, so if you are, for example, a fan of scuba diving, you can get a good idea of the top trips for bubble blowers. The books lists the Cocos Islands in Costa Rica and Chuuk lagoon in Micronesia among their top spots. Or let’s say you have long believed in UFOs and want to design a trip for you and your ET-loving friends? Well, you can do that, too, with their paranormal trips section.

Then savor my favorite section, called the Go List, which breaks out LP’s top picks for places to visit in the coming year. We’re NOT talking Florida and Vegas here. We’re talking about exotic, less-explored locales like Maluku, Indonesia and Gabon. Then there’s a section on gadgets and the best places to wed and dark travel and, well, more and more.

If I have any complaints, it that while the book really whets your appetite, you don’t leave feeling completly satisfied. In fact, you leave a bit hungrier than before. But as I say, maybe that’s what Google, or LP’s country-specific guides are there for. Either way, keeping to their fine tradition of helping you REALLY get out there, the good folks at Lonely Planet have done a fine job with this new book.

One for the Road: LP Cities

by Erik Olsen on

I hope to get my hands on this fine
new book out from Lonely Planet so I can review it for our readers, but in the meantime, y’all might be interested just
to know about it. Yes, Lonely Planet, ye of the ever useful, sometimes too heavy, guides to everywhere, has assembled an
all-new coffee-table sized compendium called The Cities Book, that
takes a close and visually-pleasing look at the world’s 200 best cities.

Of course, one man’s
"best" is another’s "worst" (i.e. Bangkok), but you can usually trust the sensibilities of the LP
folks, and it is they who have put this thing together…along with the help of dutiful readers who contributed
comments based on their own whims and experiences. One thing: it ain’t cheap ($50). But that’s probably because they
have filled the book with many vivid photos from their extensive photo catalog. You know you want it. Well, you CAN
register to get your hands on a free copy over
at the Guardian…but you’ll have to do so lickety-split, the deadline is March 30.

Fly Less Says Lonely Planet Founder

by Erik Olsen on

You expect the publishers and writers of your favorite
guidebooks to practice what they preach…but what if they get too preachy? I guess that’s my question in the matter of
Tony Wheeler and Mark Ellingham, two names behind the Lonely Planet Empire and behemoths in the world of guidebook
publishing, who
say we all fly too much, too often, and are causing permanent damage to the planet as a result. The planet is not
just lonely, they are telling us, it is getting too warm.

Strange to hear such a thing from publishing
magnates who have made their fortunes beseeching us to fly more. But it makes a bit of sense. At least part of the
equation does. The campaign, such as it is, is urging travelers to "fly less and stay longer" as well as to
donate money to carbon offsetting schemes. I’m all for the stay longer part. IMHO too many people go somewhere distant
and then stay for a day or two and jet set out having seen a monument or two. All travelers should favor the
“longer in fewer places” scheme over the “more places shorter” one.

But back to the
Wheeler entreaty. Is this a good thing or the knee-jerk pleas of folks who have made their dough and now want to tell
the rest of us what to do with our vacations? And what’s with the owner of a company that manufactures six
million copies of 600 different Lonely Planet guidebooks a year, the pulp from entire forests of trees, doing telling
us we should be more environmentally concerned? Well, despite the value of asking such questions, I still believe
Wheeler and company’s hearts are in the right place. I practice the quality over quality method of travel anyway,
so I won’t be making any methodology changes soon. But I admit I find the whole matter rather interesting.