Re-reading the First Lonely Planet
In 2003, to celebrate the company's thirtieth birthday, Lonely Planet Publications printed a replica, or ‘souvenir edition’, of its first ever guidebook, Across Asia on the Cheap. Staple-bound with a yellow cover, the book is a how-to on travelling overland from Australia to the United Kingdom.
The husband-and-wife authors and founders of Lonely Planet, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, had just made the trip in the other direction when they wrote the book from their kitchen table in Sydney. They recognized the demand for information from Australians eager to see the world. For young Australians, travelling to Britain—still considered the ‘mother country’ by many Australians at the time—was a rite of passage. The counterculture movement had made travelling overland a more enticing adventure than the traditional passenger ship.
The yellow booklet, charmingly riddled with typos and clumsy hand-drawn illustrations, fed that demand. Almost half a century later, it still contains innumerable little pleasures. On page eight, for example: “You could hitch all the way to Europe—but you will find it difficult in places, more due to lack of traffic than hospitality.” Lack of traffic is the least of the overlander’s problems these days. On embassies: “Good embassy stories occasionally come up, like the guy whose car was hopelessly kaput and had it fixed by his embassy's resident mechanic—probably more used to limousines.” Some things haven't changed: “If you wonder why Canadians are so patriotic with maple leaves on every pack, it's so people won't mistake them for Americans!” And some of the advice is, by today's standards, litigiously nonchalant. Take, for example, this morsel on food hygiene: “Eat whatever you like—you're bound to get something that doesn't like you somewhere along the line, so why worry about it,” is the advice given, with only fresh vegetables and unboiled or untreated water to be avoided.
Occasionally there are snippets of insight: “Always eat with your right hand, the left hand is used for quite another purpose ... Cutting the right hand off thieves didn't just disable them it [sic] also banned them from the dinner table.” Elsewhere, there's a recommendation that you take three dozen passport photographs for both visas and for giving to curious locals. These days, the locals are probably far less curious than their ancestors almost half a century ago.
The book has a chapter called 'Dope': “Connoisseurs say the quality in Nepal is not the best, but rave over Kashmir grass.” Here's a tip on making extra cash in the 'Buying and Selling' chapter: “If you have really got nothing worthwhile to flog and are really short of cash, you can always unload an armful. Several places have a good price for blood, Kuwait and Thessalonika in Greece in particular. Mashed [in Iran] does too, but the conditions of donation are pretty awful.”
Another section, 'Up-Tight', discusses the hassles travellers could expect from government officers such as customs: “Just why are these countries so uptight? Well you, dear traveller, are the reason. At the same time as they are trying to instill [sic] Western Materialistic Progress into their citizens, along come these westerners practising [sic] an opposite creed ... The Indian spiritualism drug freaks begging in Delhi from people who know all about real poverty do enormous damage to the overland scene, countries further east are frightened of the same thing starting up in their places.”
Inevitably, the book’s authors—very young at the time of writing—also betrayed the occasional note of Western condescension: “Travelling through Moslem countries it is surprising that the religion which once gave such drive to the countries that embraced it, now in many cases holds them back ... Islam has a restraining influence that the prophet could never have foreseen. The fatalistic view of life, everything in the hands of Allah, also has an inertial effect.” Western condescension toward Islam has changed markedly since 1973. Where Muslim culture was for generations accused by the West of inertia, it now stands charged with being inherently aggressive. Perhaps one day it will be understood that a religion can be many things to many people, and that the specifics have more to do with history than with any particular doctrinal essence.
The rest of the book is dedicated to brief profiles of the countries between Australia and Greece. While the proliferation of detail in modern-day travel guides has snuffed out much of travel's romance, this was not always the case. This section begins with Portuguese Timor, two years before the end of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal and, with it, the demise of the first maritime empire and the last. This paragraph has a whiff of politically incorrect prescience about it that would never make it past an editor’s pen these days: “Another of those last outposts of Portuguese colonialism, Timor was held by the Portuguese at the same time as the Dutch were subduing the rest of Indonesia.” Let us pass over that verb 'subduing' without comment. “... Naturally the Portuguese presence today is not appreciated by the Indonesians but as in other parts of the world, such as Angola, the Portuguese are reluctant to let go. The Indians got rid of them remarkably easily in Goa.” And it would be hard to find in any contemporary Lonely Planet guide an introductory paragraph to a country to match this one: “India can be incredibly depressing—vast, crowded and chaotic, the utter hopelessness of the country detracts from the incredible things you see. No solution seems big enough for the problems—a country best seen in small samples.”
Most interestingly of all, perhaps, is the chapter on Afghanistan: “A marvellous, crazy country—vast empty deserts, historic old towns and best of all the proud and noble Afghanis. How else can you describe them, they clearly realise that no amount of money or material possessions could ever compensate for your unfortunate handicap of not being born in their fine country.” Sadly, given the vast numbers of refugees that have been fleeing wars in Afghanistan in recent decades, this observation, if it was ever true, has since become one of Across Asia on the Cheap’s many anachronisms.
Ironically, by the time the guidebook was published, the overland travel movement was already dying. Two years earlier, Australia’s national airline purchased the first of its Boeing 747s. The 'kangaroo route' between Australia and Europe was abbreviated and the price reduced, opening up international travel to a whole new generation of people wanting to see the world. The Wheelers were able to anticipate that change and adapt their guidebook format. Eventually Lonely Planet’s books went from ‘guide’ to ‘bible’, and like the actual Bible many travellers took its advice as commandments.
Another revolution has swept travel publishing since 2003, of course, and its name is Google—as well as AirBnB, Yelp, Facebook and a host of other virtual publishers that have ushered in the twilight of the golden age of travel guides. Apparently gone, too, is the innocence of the spirit that suffuses Across Asia on the Cheap, summed up by that quote from Henry Miller: “the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.” As modern life slips into sedentary zealotry, it’s good to be reminded of a time when we looked forward to the promise of the real, not the virtual, world.
The husband-and-wife authors and founders of Lonely Planet, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, had just made the trip in the other direction when they wrote the book from their kitchen table in Sydney. They recognized the demand for information from Australians eager to see the world. For young Australians, travelling to Britain—still considered the ‘mother country’ by many Australians at the time—was a rite of passage. The counterculture movement had made travelling overland a more enticing adventure than the traditional passenger ship.
The yellow booklet, charmingly riddled with typos and clumsy hand-drawn illustrations, fed that demand. Almost half a century later, it still contains innumerable little pleasures. On page eight, for example: “You could hitch all the way to Europe—but you will find it difficult in places, more due to lack of traffic than hospitality.” Lack of traffic is the least of the overlander’s problems these days. On embassies: “Good embassy stories occasionally come up, like the guy whose car was hopelessly kaput and had it fixed by his embassy's resident mechanic—probably more used to limousines.” Some things haven't changed: “If you wonder why Canadians are so patriotic with maple leaves on every pack, it's so people won't mistake them for Americans!” And some of the advice is, by today's standards, litigiously nonchalant. Take, for example, this morsel on food hygiene: “Eat whatever you like—you're bound to get something that doesn't like you somewhere along the line, so why worry about it,” is the advice given, with only fresh vegetables and unboiled or untreated water to be avoided.
Occasionally there are snippets of insight: “Always eat with your right hand, the left hand is used for quite another purpose ... Cutting the right hand off thieves didn't just disable them it [sic] also banned them from the dinner table.” Elsewhere, there's a recommendation that you take three dozen passport photographs for both visas and for giving to curious locals. These days, the locals are probably far less curious than their ancestors almost half a century ago.
The book has a chapter called 'Dope': “Connoisseurs say the quality in Nepal is not the best, but rave over Kashmir grass.” Here's a tip on making extra cash in the 'Buying and Selling' chapter: “If you have really got nothing worthwhile to flog and are really short of cash, you can always unload an armful. Several places have a good price for blood, Kuwait and Thessalonika in Greece in particular. Mashed [in Iran] does too, but the conditions of donation are pretty awful.”
Another section, 'Up-Tight', discusses the hassles travellers could expect from government officers such as customs: “Just why are these countries so uptight? Well you, dear traveller, are the reason. At the same time as they are trying to instill [sic] Western Materialistic Progress into their citizens, along come these westerners practising [sic] an opposite creed ... The Indian spiritualism drug freaks begging in Delhi from people who know all about real poverty do enormous damage to the overland scene, countries further east are frightened of the same thing starting up in their places.”
Inevitably, the book’s authors—very young at the time of writing—also betrayed the occasional note of Western condescension: “Travelling through Moslem countries it is surprising that the religion which once gave such drive to the countries that embraced it, now in many cases holds them back ... Islam has a restraining influence that the prophet could never have foreseen. The fatalistic view of life, everything in the hands of Allah, also has an inertial effect.” Western condescension toward Islam has changed markedly since 1973. Where Muslim culture was for generations accused by the West of inertia, it now stands charged with being inherently aggressive. Perhaps one day it will be understood that a religion can be many things to many people, and that the specifics have more to do with history than with any particular doctrinal essence.
The rest of the book is dedicated to brief profiles of the countries between Australia and Greece. While the proliferation of detail in modern-day travel guides has snuffed out much of travel's romance, this was not always the case. This section begins with Portuguese Timor, two years before the end of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal and, with it, the demise of the first maritime empire and the last. This paragraph has a whiff of politically incorrect prescience about it that would never make it past an editor’s pen these days: “Another of those last outposts of Portuguese colonialism, Timor was held by the Portuguese at the same time as the Dutch were subduing the rest of Indonesia.” Let us pass over that verb 'subduing' without comment. “... Naturally the Portuguese presence today is not appreciated by the Indonesians but as in other parts of the world, such as Angola, the Portuguese are reluctant to let go. The Indians got rid of them remarkably easily in Goa.” And it would be hard to find in any contemporary Lonely Planet guide an introductory paragraph to a country to match this one: “India can be incredibly depressing—vast, crowded and chaotic, the utter hopelessness of the country detracts from the incredible things you see. No solution seems big enough for the problems—a country best seen in small samples.”
Most interestingly of all, perhaps, is the chapter on Afghanistan: “A marvellous, crazy country—vast empty deserts, historic old towns and best of all the proud and noble Afghanis. How else can you describe them, they clearly realise that no amount of money or material possessions could ever compensate for your unfortunate handicap of not being born in their fine country.” Sadly, given the vast numbers of refugees that have been fleeing wars in Afghanistan in recent decades, this observation, if it was ever true, has since become one of Across Asia on the Cheap’s many anachronisms.
Ironically, by the time the guidebook was published, the overland travel movement was already dying. Two years earlier, Australia’s national airline purchased the first of its Boeing 747s. The 'kangaroo route' between Australia and Europe was abbreviated and the price reduced, opening up international travel to a whole new generation of people wanting to see the world. The Wheelers were able to anticipate that change and adapt their guidebook format. Eventually Lonely Planet’s books went from ‘guide’ to ‘bible’, and like the actual Bible many travellers took its advice as commandments.
Another revolution has swept travel publishing since 2003, of course, and its name is Google—as well as AirBnB, Yelp, Facebook and a host of other virtual publishers that have ushered in the twilight of the golden age of travel guides. Apparently gone, too, is the innocence of the spirit that suffuses Across Asia on the Cheap, summed up by that quote from Henry Miller: “the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.” As modern life slips into sedentary zealotry, it’s good to be reminded of a time when we looked forward to the promise of the real, not the virtual, world.
