This month sees the publication of Bad Lands by Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet publications, a first-hand account of his experience travelling through some of the most repressive and dangerous regimes in the world.

The Australian author and pioneering traveller visited Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Saudi Arabia – and documented the challenges and delights of travel in these ‘Bad Lands’ in a no-nonsense style.

Below you can see an interview with Wheeler talking about his travels, a slideshow of images from the book and read an exclusive account of the country he found most interesting and would like to return to - Afghanistan.

Watch the video interview

What is it about Afghanistan that stirs such interest and passion with everybody from invading armies (Britain and Russia both burnt their fingers here) to carpet collectors (read Christopher Kremmer’s incisive The Carpet Wars) and, of course, a host of acclaimed travel writers? Eric Newby’s classic A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush and Jason Elliot’s much more recent An Unexpected Light are both set in Afghanistan. Even Bruce Chatwin wrote about it although Chatwin rejoiced that he visited the country ‘before the Hippies wrecked it’. They did this, he claimed, ‘by driving educated Afghans into the arms of the Marxists’.

As far as I know flower power didn’t bring too many other countries to their knees, but I visited Afghanistan at the height of the hippy trail era so if Chatwin got it right I guess I have to bear some responsibility for the subsequent mess. My return, 34 years later on my Axis of Evil tour to write Bad Lands, reminded me why, if the ongoing chaos ever comes to a close, this could again be a great destination.

It’s a dramatic land of snow-capped mountains and searing desert wastes, fast running rivers and villages wedged into steep green valleys. Mix in a host of crumbling old fortresses and hidden religious monuments and then add a sprinkle of abandoned Russian tanks and other armaments. Dot a few big cities into the picture and people it with the proud if sometimes slightly crazy Afghans and it’s easy to see why the place had such a magnetic pull in the 1960s and ‘70s.

My recent Afghan wanderings started and finished in Kabul with excursions north to Mazar-i-Sharif and east to Herat. From Herat I made a 4WD foray into the rugged centre of the country to visit the towering and impossibly remote Minaret of Jam. Another trip into the centre took me to Bamiyan, where the giant Buddhas were destroyed as a final act of destructive madness by the Taliban. Along the way I met amazing people and over and over again had those ‘wow, look at that’ experiences which remind us that the world is still a big, wide place full of surprising wonders. The ancient city of Balkh (just waiting for keen archaelogists to descend upon it) certainly fits that category. As does the impressive Buddhist stupa of Takht-e-Rustam, cut out of solid rock.

There were also more mundane surprises, like how good the food was or how well my mobile phone worked. I picked up a local SIM card from a mobile phone shop in the centre of Kabul and joined the Afghan hordes, shouting into their phones. It seemed to work in even remote corners of the country. Flying back to Kabul from Herat I found myself sitting next to a young Afghan phone engineer. He’d returned to Afghanistan a couple of years earlier, after growing up in a Pakistan refugee camp. In a country that sometimes feels like it’s only left the middle ages yesterday, it’s remarkable how the mobile phone and Bollywood TV soaps have become part of everyday life.

Tony Wheeler’s Badlands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil
Tony Wheeler
1st edition
RRP £8.99
ISBN 1 74179 186 3
Purchase from BooksFirst for £8.54 inc free delivery