Tony and Maureen Wheeler: Once While Travelling - The Lonely Planet Story

The story of how Lonely Planet became established is the stuff of legend. Two penniless Poms, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, wash up in Sydney after bumming their way across Asia and decide to turn their experiences into a book.

The result, Across Asia on the Cheap, written longhand on their kitchen table at weekends, launched what is now the largest independent travel publishing company in the world, with more than 600 titles in print and selling more than six million books a year.

But, obviously, there was a great deal more to the rise of Lonely Planet than that: a lot of fantastic travelling experiences, yes, but also huge amounts of grindingly hard work; a lot of excitement, yes, but also crushing, relationship-destroying stress.

Once While Travelling paints both sides of the reality behind the legend.

It certainly describes the glamorous trips to exotic places - but also the long hours spent writing, drawing maps, checking facts, chasing printers and hawking books round uninterested shopkeepers.

It captures the sheer thrill of selling out that first book within days, of printing more and seeing them sell too, of watching a dream come true - but also the price in family problems, temporary separations and broken friendships.

As you would expect from such a story there are some wonderful anecdotes, like the fact that the name arose when Tony mistakenly sang a line from the song Space Captain, made famous by Joe Cocker in the rock'n'roll film Mad Dogs & Englishmen, as: "Once while travelling across the sky this lonely planet caught my eye."

Maureen pointed out that the correct wording was "this lovely planet", but the wrong wording stuck.

Or the time when they were on an elephant trek in Nepal and a fellow tourist announced he had lost his camera lens. The pahit whispered something in his elephant's ear, it turned and "a couple of hundred metres back it stopped, reached into the tall grass and triumphantly handed up a camera lens."

We even discover that the Wheelers wouldn't have made it to where they are today without the help of a kindly Kiwi yachtie.

On their first big trip away from home the Wheelers were skint by the time they reached Bali, but they got a lift on the Auckland yacht Sun Peddler, landing on the beach at Exmouth, Western Australia, in late 1972, with 27 cents to their name.

The cover of Once While Travelling features a photo of a skinny pair of Poms - the yacht was becalmed and ran out of food - standing with their belongings on the deserted beach where they made landfall in the country that was to become their home. Given everything that was to happen later it's hard to think of a more appropriate arrival.

But the book also, unintentionally I suspect, underlines the fact that not everything about travel is interesting - remember those tedious slide shows from Uncle Cyril and Auntie Ethel? - by going on about all the places the Wheelers have visited over the years to a point almost of boredom.

That may seem a strange thing for a travel editor to say, but I fear that at times, rather like a bad guidebook, the story tries to cram too much information about too many places and too many events into too small a space, and ends up doing few of them justice.

Rather than reading a bit about every trip I would have preferred to hear more about some of the special ones. Still, that's a minor quibble. This is an inspirational tale, whether you're a budding entrepreneur, an enthusiastic traveller, or just an armchair explorer.

One question the book doesn't answer - and the one the Wheelers say they are most often asked - is what these peripatetic travellers regard as their favourite destination.

Tony reckons it's an impossible question because different people have different interests, and different places have different highlights: the food, the trekking, the people, the wildlife.

However, when I pestered him on the subject in an interview about the book, he did acknowledge having a few favourites:

Nepal: It's probably the place I've been back to more times than anywhere else because there's always another trek to make (and as a very well known New Zealander would confirm, the Himalayas are seriously addictive).

Iran: When George W. posted his Evil Axis hit parade I decided I had to revisit this key member of the list. Isfahan was as visually spectacular as I remembered it, but I'd forgotten the amazing friendliness of the Iranians.

French Polynesia: It's overpriced and overrated, but whether it's mountain high on islands like Moorea or barely breaking the surface on a Tuamotan atoll, those islands are mouth-watering.

France: We've all overdosed on Paris postcards and there are far too many tourists, but a couple of weeks lazing around Provence will convince anybody just why it's so popular.

China: Love it or hate it, this is where it's all happening today. Everything seems to be moving at warp speed and cities like Shanghai are right at the cutting edge.

Botswana: Precious Ramotswe and her Number One Ladies Detective Agency have certainly put this country on the literary map, but she's also reminded us that visiting Africa can be a delightful experience.

* Penguin, $35