Table Of ContentThe Lonely Planet Story
A beat-up old car, a few dollars in the pocket, and a
sense of adventure.
That’s all Tony and Maureen Wheeler needed for the trip of a
lifetime. They met on a park bench in Regent’s Park, London and
married a year later. For their honeymoon, they decided to
attempt what few people thought possible - crossing Europe and
Asia overland, all the way to Australia.
It was too amazing an experience to keep to themselves.
Urged by their friends, they stayed up nights at their kitchen
table writing, typing and stapling together their very first travel
guide, Across Asia on the Cheap.
Within a week they’d sold 1500 copies and Lonely Planet was
born. Two years later, their second journey led to the creation of
Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, which led to books on Nepal,
Australia, Africa and India, and 40 years later, to this book...
lonelyplanet.com
Cover images ©iStock.com/asonsaw, ©iStock.com/YangYin, ©Lonely Planet/Getty Images,
©iStock.com/rchphoto, ©iStock.com/isoft, ©iStock.com/asiafoto, ©iStock.com/AlesVeluscek,
©iStock.com/UroshPetrovic, ©iStock.com/holgs, ©iStock.com/Matauw, ©iStock.com/jvoisey,
©iStock.com/narvikk, ©iStock.com/compassandcamera, ©iStock.com/hatman12, ©iStock.com/zanskar,
©iStock.com/ ImagineGolf, ©iStock.com/Eerik, ©iStock.com/Nikada, ©iStock.com/ SabrinaPintus,
©iStock.com/Harvepino
Title Page globe uses relief shading by Mountain High Maps ® © 1993 Digital Wisdom Inc.
Contents
THE WORLD
Welcome to the World
Need to Know
If You Like…
Itineraries
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Anguilla
Antarctica
Antigua & Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba, Bonaire & Curaçao
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas, The
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia & Hercegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros & Mayotte
Congo (DRC)
Congo, Republic of the
Cook Islands
Costa Rica
Côte d’Ivoire
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
England
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Falkland Islands
Fiji
Finland
France
French Guiana
Gabon
Gambia, The
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Greenland
Grenada
Guadeloupe
Guam
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel & the Palestinian Territories
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macau
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Martinique
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Micronesia
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar (Burma)
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands, The
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
North Korea
Northern Ireland
Northern Marianas
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Pitcairn Island
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Samoa
San Marino
São Tomé & Príncipe
Saudi Arabia
Scotland
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia & Somaliland
South Africa
South Korea
South Sudan
Spain
Sri Lanka
St Kitts & Nevis
St Lucia
St Vincent & the Grenadines
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Tahiti & French Polynesia
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Tibet
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad & Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Turks & Caicos
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United States of America (USA)
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City
Venezuela
Vietnam
Virgin Islands, US & British
Wales
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Acknowledgements
Welcome to
the World
Third Rock from the Sun. Mother Earth. The Blue Marble. The spinning ball of
rock that is the world goes by many names, but it is also the place that each and
every one of us calls home. And wherever it is that you call home, you can be sure
that if you travel – near or far – the world will exhibit its overwhelming beauty and
diversity. Adventure and inspirational experiences await around every corner, so
what’s stopping you? Go forth and explore.
Natural Wonders
Comedian Steven Wright once quipped, ‘You can’t have everything – where would you put it?’
Weighing in at 5.97219×1024 kg, and with 149 million sq km of landmass (and another 361 million
sq km of ocean), the world has room enough to fit ‘everything.’ Amidst all of that ‘everything’ there
is so much to discover, from rivers deep, like the Nile (snaking 6850km from central Africa to the
Mediterranean), and the sunken shores of the Dead Sea (427m below sea level), to mountains high,
like the Himalayas (more than 100 peaks over 7200m, including Everest at 8848m), the Andes and
the Alps.
Across seven continents and 221 countries, ‘everything’ takes plenty of wondrous forms. There
are mighty expanses of greenery, like the Amazon basin (7 million sq km of jungle), while beneath
the crystal-clear Pacific Ocean lies the Great Barrier Reef (stretching 2300km), and the scarred
hide of the Grand Canyon is a repository of 2 billion years of geological history.
Not all the world’s wonders are inanimate, however. Wildlife spectacles include the annual
wildebeest migration (two million strong) across the Serengeti, the stoic emperor penguins of
Antarctica, and the diverse menagerie on the Galapagos Islands, where people seem out of place.
Spectacular Cities
It is people, not animals, who have colonised the entire planet. Since foregoing stone tools,
inventing the wheel (3300BC) and first smelting iron (1200BC), humankind has embarked on a big
production number that features countless cultures, civilisations and empires. History suggests
that humans were naturally inclined to warfare but also –more positively – to congregating and
cohabiting, thus, over time the city was born.
More than half of the world’s population now live in cities. They are the pulsating beacons that
attract us, with their bright lights and human interaction, epicentres of culture, industry and
endeavour. And each has its own distinctive character: New York with its skyscrapers and taxicabs,
London with its parks, pubs and palaces, Sydney with its bridge and Cape Town set against the
rugged panorama of Table Mountain. A tour of urban conurbations will take you to geographical
oddities (İstanbul straddling the border of Europe and Asia), and cities of faith (Jerusalem, holy to
Judaism, Islam and Christianity), cities with thousands of years of history (Athens, Damascus,
Varanasi) and booming new cities mushrooming across Asia, Africa and South America.
