If you haven’t heard of Lonely Planet, you’ve never taken a trip. Tony and Maureen Wheeler were the founders of this global travel empire which is now owned by the BBC. The story of Lonely Planet is the story a story which has inspired travel writers for a generation.
Tony Wheeler is an Amazing Vagabond.
Born in Britain but raised in Karachi, Pakistan, the West Indies (Bahamas) , and the United States. He studied to be a car designer but was sidetracked by a trip to India with his wife Maureen in the early 1972. The two of them were entranced by the ‘hippie trail’ and the next year founded Lonely Planet in Australia where they had traveled overland from Britain.
They drove from London to Afghanistan in a beat up minivan and eventually arrived in Sydney, Australia, with 27 cents between them.
The two wrote a book Across Asia on the Cheap. The book was an immediate success and even though there was no internet, they established themselves as the first budget travel bloggers (even with no blogs in the world). The next year, the couple wrote Southeast Asia on a Shoestring and they were off…The book is still in print and has sold more than a million copies. Enough to found an empire.
For many, that would have been enough, but the couple went on to publish the Lonely Planet India Guide in 1981. That book opened the door to even more.
Tony and Maureen sold Lonely Planet to the BBC several years ago but they are both still traveling and active. You can follow Tony’s blog at here
Lonely Planet sells six million books each year, 90 per cent overseas. Lonely Planet has printed more than 54 million copies of its 600 guides in 17 languages and has $85 million annual turnover.
THEY REFUSED TO STAY PUT. SO DID CD DAMITIO.
The person you just read about is one of them — the ones who chose the road over the roof, the horizon over the mortgage, the interesting life over the safe one. History is full of these people. Most of them never made the textbooks.
Vagabonds: Getting Lost Is the Point collects their stories — from Herodotus and Ibn Battuta to Jack Kerouac, Grandma Gatewood, and Anthony Bourdain. Sharp profiles, honest portraits, and the one thing they all share: a refusal to accept the default life on offer.
Written by CD Damitio — two VW buses, fifty countries, a decade outside America, and eventually Japan. He knows these people not as history but as kin.
The book ends with interviews with living vagabonds. And, in the final interview, with Planet Earth itself.
My books don’t fit in any neat box — because they’re about people who feel something huge is missing… and actually go look for it. Some even find it.
Dive into the full catalog and see which story hits you hardest. CD Damitio on Amazon.
CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA
CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.
