From Belfast to Burma

The doctors in the hospital in the ancient Indian city of Varanasi were reluctant to tell me what my travelling companion was suffering from. He could not move, had a dangerously high temperature and kept moaning, "I want to die". I grabbed my Lonely Planet guide book and thumbed furiously through the health section. Cholera? Dengue fever? Meningitis? No. He had typhoid. But according to those nice people at Lonely Planet, he was getting the correct treatment, so I could stop panicking.

For millions of travellers worldwide, Lonely Planet is a fundamental part of the globetrotting experience and a glimpse of the familiar cover clutched in a sweaty hand has initiated many a friendship and romance. The proud boast of Lonely Planet cofounder Maureen Wheeler is that wherever you want to go, you can take Lonely Planet with you.

As the largest independent travel publisher in the world, with a turnover in excess of £6 million, prepares to celebrate 25 years of travel, Maureen expresses surprise that the books proved so popular. "It was a complete fluke," she says, in a soft Australian accent which bears little evidence of her Belfast childhood.

This business empire has its roots in the swinging London of 1971, where 20-year-old Maureen, three days off the boat from Belfast, met Tony Wheeler on a park bench. A year later, married but not ready to settle down, they took the hippie trail through Asia. Ending up in Australia, broke and inundated with questions on their trip, the couple typed up 96 pages of "how to" information based on their diaries, stapled it together and called it Asia On The Cheap. It sold out in 10 days and provided the basis of their dream career: a job which would allow them to travel.

"We had no money," laughs Maureen. "Every trip we did, we then did a book on to make money for the next trip. So we did books on places where we wanted to go to."

Not only has the world changed since the Wheelers began writing guidebooks, but the type of traveller is no longer the same. "In the 1970s, people felt they could drop out and spend two or three years travelling - taking local transport, staying in local places and meeting local people. The aim was to travel as cheaply as you could. We wrote for those people because that's who we were," says Maureen. "In the 1980s and 1990s, people feel as if they will lose out if they are not on a career path and they now go for four or six weeks, and they have more money to spend. But I do not see a difference between travellers and tourists - many people now use a package tour as a way of getting into the country and then use Lonely Planet to go off the tourist trail and see the place in more depth."

Tourism to "exotic" destinations has become commonplace and the world has become much smaller in the 25 years since Maureen first discovered the pristine beaches of Bali. "When I arrived at Kuta beach, I thought I'd found paradise. Now it's a strip, like Torremolinos." However, she remains positive about what many see as the destructive nature of mass travel: "It's a waste to see the negative aspects. The Balinese are much better off. They want the things that we all want: to educate their children and give them opportunities. We cannot expect people to stay poor and picturesque just so that we can go and look at them. Traditional lifestyles, like fishing, are disappearing all over the world and tourism is better than building factories. "The challenge of tourism is to make it fit in with the local environment and not impose high-rise concrete hotels. Travellers have a responsibility to support things which are in keeping - don't stay in that five-storey concrete block in Vietnam and developers will stop building them.

Although there are other guidebooks, it is the name Lonely Planet which strikes fear into the hearts of hotel owners when a researcher walks in. A mention in the "yellow bible" (as South-east Asia On A Shoestring is affectionately known) or any of the other 300-plus publications, can make or break a restaurant, hotel or cafe in parts of the world where the budget travel hordes roam in search of the cheapest hotel room or the best banana pancake. It can also change a sleepy coastal village into an overcrowded, polluted tourist hell.

Maureen acknowledges the power of Lonely Planet: "We wouldn't put a place in the guide if we felt it did not have the infrastructure and would not survive the influx which follows a listing. I take responsibility when we put a place in a book and if it only has one hotel or restaurant, we would discourage people from going." The company backs its ethical stance with hard cash and this year has contributed more than £150,000 to self-help projects in the Third World, such as health clinics, wells and education for women. Lonely Planet has created a community of travellers who bus and train it with the atlases and guidebooks, stay in posh hotels with the cityguides, fantasise with the travel literature, hike with the walking guides, chat with the help of the phrasebooks and exchange information and pick up the latest travel news on the Internet site (which gets a million hits a day) and will soon be going underwater with the scuba-diving guides. Maureen always travels with the Lonely Planet guides, as well as half-a-dozen books from the competition, and is by no means jaded by her years on the road. "I love to live out of a backpack and stay in hotels. It makes life so simple," she says.

Simplicity is one thing this entrepreneur may be short of as she juggles the needs of two teenage children, a home in Australia, a business with more than 200 employees and offices in four countries, and a husband who continues to travel and research guides.

"We travel as a family for three months every year - Tashi (17) loves travelling and had been round South East Asia at eight months, but Kieran (15) who took his first trip to Nepal at three months old, has always hated being away from his own things. Then I spend one month travelling on business, visiting our offices and bookfairs, while Tony spends a few months researching. He has just got back from a sailing expedition around the Pacific islands and his next trip is a walking holiday in Corsica. We're a good team - I do the business side while Tony has the great ideas." So where does the travel expert like to go for holidays? "My favourite places are Burma and Nepal because the people are fabulous and I love the countryside. I'm very excited about my next trip, which is to Tibet, and there are parts of Africa and the Middle East which I would love to see. But I never have a real holiday - I always take my notebook and a Lonely Planet guide."