Recently we had the opportunity to sit down with Tony Wheeler, the founder of Lonely Planet, in San Francisco. He was on a whirlwind tour in the United States promoting his new book, Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil. We spent about an hour in the interview. Immediately following his book promotion tour he was off to attempt a climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa 5,895 meters (19,340 feet). We asked him a series of questions - this is … [Read more...]
Bad Lands
Bad Lands by Tony Wheeler Join Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler as he explores some of the "badlands" in the world. He visited the following nine countries because of their human-rights abuses: Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. … [Read more...]
Iran; the most misunderstood country of the world!
Over the years when talking to a foreign tourist who has come to my motherland for the very first time I've gotten used to hearing expressions such as "wow! I see you have restaurants in Iran!", or "Believe me Iran was not what I'd thought", "I never thought you had such a beautiful country" and so on. For the global public opinions and the mass majority who do not have any particular way of knowing a distant land rather than relying on the … [Read more...]
Persepolis; The Magnificence of Asian History
There are currently nine world heritage sites registered to UNESCO from Iran: Persepolis is the first of them all. Persepolis is the main symbol of Persian culture and civilization for Iranians around the globe and is reckoned a source of honor for young people in modern day Iran. The architectural traits of this ceremonial palace make it a unique site in the country -- and the world -- and an attraction for thousands of tourists who … [Read more...]
The Fire Temples of Darius
Just down the street from where the Ayatollah Khomeini's simple house stands in a leafy northern suburb of Tehran, someone had scrawled the following on a wall: 'America: there is not a damn thing you can do!' It was spray painted in English. Elsewhere, I spotted large murals depicting skulls on the American flag with the words "Down with the USA!" across it. Also in English. None of this came as a shock to me; in fact I expected to see such … [Read more...]
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles anchors the heart of Southern California and LA is the 'King' here in the south land. International tourists who visit California often say to me, I visited Los Angeles and San Francisco, and I really didn't like Los Angeles, but San Francisco was so awesome; it is such a small city - easy to get around, manageable, picturesque etc. Well that is not what LA is about. To the casual visitor Los Angeles can be extremely overwhelming to … [Read more...]