Lonely Planet at 30

Travel Stories: Jim Benning celebrates three decades of groundbreaking independent travel guides

Enter Tony and Maureen Wheeler. Like many other adventurous young souls at the time, the British couple set out on the so-called Hippie Trail across Asia, “driving, bussing, hitching, sailing and railing their way from England to Australia,” according to the story of Lonely Planet, re-told in every book. After the trip, the couple sat down at a kitchen table and wrote and stapled together their first guidebook, “Across Asia on the Cheap.” It was, according to the company, the first modern guide to Asia published in any language.

With that, the Lonely Planet empire was born. Its earliest titles featured off-the-beaten-track destinations that would come to define the company and seal its reputation among seasoned travelers. “Across Asia on the Cheap” begat “Southeast Asia on a Shoestring,” which begat “Trekking in the Himalayas.” In the ensuing decades, the company became the first to publish guides to a number of distant places, including Peru, Bolivia, East Timor and Antarctica.

More than 600 titles are now in print. Travelers can find a Lonely Planet guide to every country recognized by the United Nations except one: the tiny island nation of Comoros off Madagascar. The islands, as it happens, are often referred to as the “Forgotten Islands.” But Lonely Planet is on the case: The country will be covered in a guide to Madagascar due out in June.

Other guidebook publishers have had an impact on independent travel, of course. Rough Guides and Moon Handbooks have both covered far-flung countries, and often very well. But no other company catering to independent travelers has rivaled Lonely Planet in its widespread following, adventurous approach and global reach.

Even Rick Steves, who has inspired many Americans to travel abroad with his popular guidebooks and his public television series, is unequivocal in his appreciation.

“I’m a big fan,” he told me recently. “Whenever I go outside Europe, I use a Lonely Planet book. I like their commitment to get-your-fingers-dirty travel in local cultures.”

Lonely Planet’s success has not come without a fair amount of criticism, however.

In some places, including much of Asia, the guidebooks are so popular that readers following their advice can find themselves crossing paths with the same Lonely Planet-carrying travelers drawn to the same hotels again and again. In China, a country so huge I imagined one could never meet the same traveler twice, I ran into one couple, their well-worn Lonely Planet guidebook in hand, four times in four distant cities. In Malaysia, I became so tired of seeing the same travelers I stepped off a train in a town I’d never heard of to spend the night, simply because the place didn’t appear in my Lonely Planet book.

As the narrator of Alex Garland’s novel “The Beach” rants, “Set up in Bali, Koh Phangan, Koh Tao, Boracay, and the hordes are bound to follow. There’s no way you can keep it out of Lonely Planet, and once that happens it’s countdown to doomsday.”

Others have complained that too many independent travelers, including more than a few Lonely Planet adherents, are stingy to a fault. They spend thousands of dollars to fly to ever more distant lands untouched by the West, only to alight among poverty-stricken peasants and haggle over the cost of a $4 room. These travelers, the complaint goes, spread Western culture without sharing their wealth among people who could benefit from it the most. They take too much and give too little and leave the places they visit only worse for the wear.

The criticism has some merit. One can undoubtedly find these travelers and backpacker ghettos all over the world, from Asia to Africa to South America. But Lonely Planet is not to blame; travelers themselves are to blame. They have choices. In any case, they are still the exception. They don’t truly characterize independent travel today.

At its best, independent travel changes the way we see the world. And it alters the way we see ourselves in the world. We come to see the globe as a fragile place, and its citizens as people not all that different from ourselves. Over time, we become better citizens, not just of our own countries, but of the world. First, however, we must take a leap of faith, pack our bags and go.

Lonely Planet’s guidebooks have encouraged millions of people to do just that, and to do so with care.


Tags: Global Village, Lonely Planet, Travel Writing, Antarctica, Australia & Pacific, Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Central America, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America


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