Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler goes travelling through Iran, Iraq, North Korea and numerous other places of dubious morality to see if they really are irredeemably evil. It’s a fast paced and fascinating take on these otherwise forbidden countries
When I reviewed The Lonely Planet Story I said I wished Tony Wheeler had spent more time talking about the places he and his wife Maureen had visited during their years of travel, rather than the genesis of the hugely successful travel book company they founded. With Bad Lands, Tony Wheeler has done just that. Deciding to visit all the countries that make up President Bush’s Axis Of Evil, (Iran, North Korea, Iraq) plus several others that are of similarly dubious standing in the world, (Saudi Arabia, Burma, Cuba, Afghanistan) Wheeler presents a whirlwind tour through modern day pariah states and also through his own travel history. It’s a great premise for a book, a little like PJ O’Rourke’s fantastic Holidays In Hell brought up to date.
Bad Lands – Tony Wheeler
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A lot of these countries I know virtually nothing about – the chapter on Iran, for example, was a real eye-opener – and Bad Lands provides a great antidote to the usual fear and loathing stuff we’re fed by the TV. While Iran and Iranians have much to be commend them in terms of their friendliness and lack of religious bigotry by Wheeler’s account, the veil is also lifted on the horrors routinely perpetrated in Saudi Arabia that get no airtime on CNN thanks to their owning all the oil. Saudi is an almost impossible place to be a tourist – just like Iraq and North Korea – so it’s Wheeler’s first time in each of these countries, and the novelty value alone propels his narrative well. He uses the standard travel narrative trick of meshing together the narrative of his days with bits and pieces of the country’s politics, history and culture triggered by his travels, which do a good job of explaining his own enthusiasms and signposting stuff for further reading without getting bogged down in particular topics.
The chapters where Bad Lands really excels though are in the countries that Wheeler’s visited before, especially Afghanistan, which opens the book and where the massive and appalling changes that have occurred in that country over the last 30 years are thrown into stark relief. It’s hard to believe that war-ravaged Afghanistan used to be the epicentre of the Hippie Trail only 30 years ago, and Wheeler brings out some good anecdotes that highlight the differences between his first trip and current one. The most obvious difference is the absence of the giant Buddha Statues of Bamiyan, which, as he notes “to his eternal regret”, he and Maureen didn’t visit in 1972 because it was too expensive to do so at $15 each. Now the Buddha statues have disappeared forever, blown up by the Taliban in 2001 as part of their purge of all non-Islamic art. It’s these details that makes Wheeler’s writing much more personal, and I found myself wishing he had made even more efforts to compare and contrast places in the 20 or 30 years that had passed since he’d seen them. There are not that many people who go back to the same places twice as travellers, so it’s an interesting perspective.
Bad Lands does have the sense of being dictated rather than written – the prose is often quite sloppy, with quite a few conversational banalities in it that don’t really work in print. Editor Alan Hurndall could have tightened the manuscript up considerably, but the sense of the book being spoken rather than written makes it very easy to read if a bit clumsy in places. There is also the Evil Meter at the back, which is a forced attempt to compare just how evil each of the regimes visited are which bizarrely seems quite lenient in some cases. (The Burmese junta gets off with a mildly malnevolent rating – surely some mistake?). It’s an interesting way of taking stock of the world’s grimness, but it feels like a badly told joke.
These are minor niggles though. Bad Lands is an easy-reading introduction to the supposedly evil places of the world which I found entertaining and quite enlightening too. It’s made me want to go and see Iran, for starters, so I can’t praise it much more highly than that. I think, besides quibbling about how well written the book is, the very fact of Tony Wheeler going and seeing for himself what goes on in these supposedly evil countries is something to commended. In an age where we can trust the media less and less to give us a rounded view of just about anything, we need to fall back on trying to get an idea of people and places for ourselves, rather than what we’re told to believe.
Bad Lands – Tony Wheeler
See all books by Tony Wheeler at
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
