As Odyssey Books celebrates 30 years in the travel guide business, founder Magnus Bartlett tells Patrick Brzeski why he keeps his world in motion.

Magnus Bartlett is in ruminative mood when I join him for tea in the China Club. He’s been up since 4am, having slept briefly and fitfully, after learning the evening before that an old ex-girlfriend had passed away. “I hadn’t seen her in 30 years, but it really saddened me,” he says. “Christine Noonan, a beautiful girl. She was one of the stars of a famous 1960s British film called If by new wave director Lindsay Anderson.” Suddenly though, his wistfulness flashes to enthusiasm. “On a whim, I got out of bed and typed in her name on YouTube; and bam, there she was, smiling at Malcolm McDowell the cheeky school boy,” he beams. “It’s incredible the breadth of material at our fingertips now. I’m extremely interested, currently, in the whole business of convergent technologies – meaning books, video, the internet, web 2.0, web 3.0. It’s fascinating stuff, and for older people like myself, absolutely vital I think.” It’s a characteristic Bartlett turn: at one moment nostalgically entangled in the memories of his past, at the next, eagerly engaged and optimistic about what the future may bring.

To those who know him, in the many Hong Kong social circles in which he swims, Bartlett is considered something of a local treasure. In addition to being a first-rate raconteur, for the past 30 years he has been publishing idiosyncratic travel guides at Odyssey Books & Guides, the publishing house he established in 1979.

The story of how Bartlett, who was born in Scotland’s remote Orkney Islands, got his start in travel books goes a long way towards explaining the passionate – if at times financially foolhardy – Odyssey approach to publishing.

In the late 1970s Bartlett was living and working in Hong Kong as a freelance photographer, when his New York-based agent proposed that he join one of the first package tours to China. “China was then just beginning to open and we thought it would be an interesting story, or at least a way to get into China to take some photos. I think you’ll find in life that good things often come from bad,” he says with a genial, avuncular lilt. “The awful miracle that happened on this occasion was that two weeks before I was set to depart I developed an abscess on my groin. Don’t ask me how I got a groin injury, but it was serious enough that the good folks at the Adventist Hospital had to lance it and instructed me to spend two weeks off my feet, overcoming the infection.”

In anticipation of being bedridden, Bartlett made a stop on the cab ride home from the hospital at the old Swindon Bookstore on Lock Road and bought a boxful of books on China. He then spent the next two weeks reading up on Chinese history and culture while convalescing.

“I never would have done that if it hadn’t been for my injury,” he says. “But as a result, when I arrived in Peking with the tour group of 30 gweilos, I was suddenly a guru. You know photographers are simple folk, we usually don’t know very much other than how to operate our cameras. But in this case I had researched China quite seriously and was full of info.”

Bartlett left China with 60 rolls of Kodachrome – which were sent to New York for processing and eventually ran in both Newsweek and Time – and a lasting sense that he possessed information valuable to the lay traveller. “I then had the impertinence to think that maybe, when the pictures came back, I could put together a guidebook.”

He founded Odyssey shortly after, in 1979, and published three Chinese guides in short succession – one for Peking, one for Shanghai and another for Canton – using his photographs as the platform. “And they sold like crazy! I thought, God, publishing is really interesting, and it’s also really, really easy,” he says. “You see, there was no competition at the time and everyone was really hungry for info on the newly opened China. Obviously, that’s not so much the case today, at least in terms of the competition.”

Jump forward 30 years and Bartlett has published more than 100 guidebooks – one for each state in the US and a title for nearly every corner of Asia. By all accounts, Odyssey is the longest running English travel guide publisher in China. The company has been courageous in allowing its writers to pursue eccentric projects of passion over the years. “My favourite project was a guide we did to the music of Tennessee. It was a complete catastrophe financially, but a beautiful book and a lot of fun. We also did a lovely guide to Kamchatka [a remote peninsula on the northeastern coast of Russia].”

Mongolia: Nomad Empire of the Sun, Odyssey’s latest title – released last month to coincide with their 30 year anniversary – is typical of the imprint. The 536-page book is rich with colourful maps, stunning photos, historical essays and literary extracts from Western writers who’ve travelled Mongolia over the decades; yet a mere 30 of its pages are given over to practical information for travellers. “We try to make books that are treasures, that you want to keep, that are beautiful and encyclopaedic, and that you will show to your friends when they come over for dinner,” he says. “We don’t expect people to carry our 500-page guides around with them in their backpacks. This new book, like all of our books, will enhance your trip enormously if you read it before you depart. Like me reading in bed before I went to China. That trip completely changed my perspective on China, but only because I knew a little something about it before I got there. So many people go to places completely ignorant, thinking they’ll learn about it when they get there, but by then it’s too late, because you’re already experiencing culture shock and caught in the whirlwind of your travels. Do a little homework and you’ll get ten times as much pleasure from your trip.”

On the future of Odyssey, Bartlett says he’s committed to carrying the company into the new digital domain. “These days the internet is the best place to go for travel information of the Lonely Planet sort; but with Kindle and the supposedly about-to-be-launched tablet from Apple, quite soon it’s going to be comfortable to read large chunks of text, with nice images, on an e-reader – which is our area. So we’re going to have to keep moving. I don’t want to be seen as just a printer. I’ve had 30 years in publishing and I’d like 30 more.”

Bartlett then asks me if I know the old Yogi Berra quote. I don’t, as I haven’t known many of his references and philosophical quotes from the past hour. “What do you do when you come to a fork in the road? Take it.”

Odyssey Books & Guides can be found at www.odysseypublications.com and in bookstores around the world.