At 62, Tony Wheeler, the co-founder of Lonely Planet, is still an enthusiastic and restless soul - and insists there is much left to explore. Roger Beaumont caught up with him in Bangkok.

You have probably travelled more than the rest of us can only dream about. The BBC has also just bought 75 per cent of Lonely Planet for 300 million pounds. Can you tell me exactly where it all went wrong?

Wheeler: [laughs] Probably with some of the local delicacies I've been asked to try along the way.

So what is your role at Lonely Planet now?

You never really leave what you have created and I'm also very proud of what we have done. And if somebody screwed it around you'd be very unhappy. I've had a CEO and a publisher for some time now. I'd done all the sorting out of book contracts and arguing with authors. To some extent all the interesting publishing things had been done, so I was freed up for other challenges like writing "Bad Lands".

"Bad Lands" was quite a departure from LP travel guides. It also seemed to liberate you in expressing your own opinions. Is this a new direction?

I really enjoyed doing that book and found the more roguish countries fascinating, especially North Korea. It's so totally bizarre. There were also views of mine I wanted to express and I'm enthusiastic about doing a follow up.

What will that be called? "Really Bad Lands"?

Maybe "Slightly Bad Lands" or "Not So Bad Lands" ... we'll think of something.

You've just been to Haiti.

Yes. A country that has particular reason for being off the rails. The whole country has a devastated feel to it. There were food riots just after I left. It's been severely deforested. And there's no money. It's interesting in many respects. The slaves rose up but it's been a disaster. There are big problems and few answers.

Did any bad land leave you pessimistic or angry?

Lots of things leave me pessimistic and angry these days. Columbia is another one I'd like to put in the next book. One of the ongoing problems is the war on drugs, which is basically an American war. They are financing both sides. They pour money in to get rid of the drugs, spraying fields and catching dealers, but they are also buying the drugs.

Like the Colombian president who said we'd stop growing it if you stopped buying it.

Exactly. And they tried this before. It was called Prohibition. And it didn't work. It will never work.

Is your advice for travellers today the same as it has always been - just go?

Basically, yes. People worry a lot before they make a decision. China fascinates because there are now millions of young Chinese reading about the outside world online and wanting to explore it. Not so long ago even travelling out of their own city was impossible. Now, it's possible. But many young Chinese asked me - is it safe?

You give a lecture called "Places I Have Ruined".

Yes [laughs]. I say Bali was fine until Lonely Planet came along. And there were hardly any tourists in Angkor Wat until we arrived. Then I showed a picture of bombed out buildings in Kabul and told them we'll be blamed for ruining Afghanistan as well.

How can the travel industry respond to climate change?

If I was God and the heavenly organisation said, "God we've given you an extra x billion dollars to fix the climate problem", I wouldn't start with the travel business. If you wanted to make a difference right now, you should accelerate the development of electric cars. They are not perfect yet, but we could get all those gas guzzling polluting cars off the road. It will happen in our lifetime. It could happen even faster. Hotels are also doing their bit now for the environment, partly because of the energy costs of running one.

Reasons to be cheerful?

Chinese kids travelling and bringing their ideas back that will one day break the government's hold on society. But where there was once 100 bicycles, there are now 1,000 cars.

What else is on the horizon?

I'd love to do the Karakoram Highway, but Africa beckons. Out of 50 odd countries in Africa, we still don't get a writer into about five because they are so dangerous or chaotic. I want to go to the Congo and Zaire. More adventures.