Personal Travel Companion

Unlikely Destinations! "How two backpackers trekked across Asia - and revolutionized the world of independent travel!"

This book tells the story of Tonny and Maureen Wheeler, owners and founders of the Lonely Planet Travel Guides.   The story is told in their own words from both Tonny and Maureen's perspective.  Part autobiographical and part business history, the book is an honest, seemingly unbiased look at themselves, their business and the world as a whole.   Starting from their early adulthood in 1970  Unlikely Destinations lets us in on the first sparks of romance between the two England academics and follows them through a journey covering all corners of the world, then on to a publishing empire which changed personal guided travel forever.

This book was a wonderful 100 page read.  Sadly however, there are 370 pages between the covers.  I'm not bashing the book, but parts of it go on like a travel log.   Often stories meander and jump from location to location without any theme.  Sometimes the stories jump years at a time and then jump back again, without any real continuity to make sense of it all.  I felt like the book was written without any outline to pull it together.   It was as if (and maybe it was) they simply started with travel notes from the beginning and started writing whatever came to mind as they plowed through them.   Often topics would come back to the same point multiple times or would jump to a topic that made sense in their own heads, but they failed to give us the background before hand.

With that said however, the story of their first ten years of travel and the truly inspiring drive to create their guidebooks is very interesting and educational.  These two really worked their butts off for little to no money for a long time before becoming the publishing behemoths they are today.  Their accounts of travel in those early years are full of adventure and intrigue.   If you have traveled much in the past two decades you will marvel at the changes that have occurred around the world as they describe how they slept on the beaches of Phuket in Thailand because there were no hotels (absurd now) or how Iran was a hot spot for tourism.

As the book progresses (along with the growing company) the adventures become more like a long list of destinations with little poetic description and lots of mundane detail.   Focus turns to specifics (all to many) of how the business grew and transformed.   They told me everything about the business except what I really wanted to know.  Details about accounting and relocation of work space is plentiful while details of how their writers find their information is scarce.  I was really hoping to get an earful of how they find all those hotels, how they get their information, how they decide what to include etc..  But these sorts of details were lacking.

All in all I'd say if you have used and enjoyed the Lonely Planet Guides during your travels or if you just want some interesting travel logs to read, you should get this book.   Despite falling asleep a few times, there is still enough good content to make it worth your while.

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