Jiří Hanzelka 24.12.1920 - 15.2.2003   - passed away 18 years ago   

Miroslav Zikmund 14.2.1919        celebrated his 102 years birthday

A couple who became a legend for several generations, who went on such distant and exotic journeys, which were not even dreamed of by normal mortals. While these names probably do not mean anything to the younger generation and even the list of countries visited does not impress them nowadays, they were an idol for the older generation in Czechoslovakia.

Hanzelka and Zikmund were the most important Czech world travelers of 20th century
They meet in 1938, when they begin to study at the University of business in Prague. They are united by a passion for travel: already at school they create the so-called 5p plan (five continents) and work on it even after the closure of universities during the nazi occupation. They learn foreign languages, study maps and atlases, read travel books. After the war and after finishing their studies, they apply for job in Tatra Kopřivnice and gradually convince the management of the enterprise to help them achieve their dream goal. It sounds like a fairy tale, but it succeeds: they become sales representatives of the Tatras. 

Factory Tatra Kopřivnice has a long history going back to the end of 19th Century. From the Second World War to the present, the company specializes in trucks but produced also other cars.

22nd April 1947 leaving Czechoslovakia for the world trip

They undertook a study promotional trip with the Tatra car(1947-50) to Africa and South America. From the extracted material they processed over 1000 radio and magazine reports, travel books, short and feature films.
In 1959-64, Hanzelka and Zikmund plus two other collaborators traveled to Asia,  and Oceania. They published in a variety of daily newspapers, in popular scientific and professional journals.

South America with the skull hunters

In Albania 1959

      South Africa

According to Zikmund, the world was safer at the time of their trip to Africa and South America. During the African trip, they visited, for example, Italy-controlled Somalia, which is at the beginning of the 21st century. a collapsed state dangerous to foreigners. The most dangerous situation in Africa was experienced by Zikmund and Hanzelka in Abyssinia, where they were ambushed by robbers.

When the communist coup happened in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 they were in the Belgian Congo, where the local press paid little attention to the events in central Europe.

In Egypt they spent the night at the top of the Cheops Pyramid, in Tanganyika they climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro, in the Congo forest they met with pygmies, from Cape Town they sailed by boat to Buenos Aires...

They made the second journey with an escort in two modified Tatra 805 trucks in the years 1959-1964. On the second trip, they visited, for example, Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan or Iraq. They traveled through much of the Soviet Union, from Tiksi in the north of Yakutia to Pamir in Tajikistan.[12] they could not visit China since in the 60s. during the reign of Mao Zedong, a dispute broke out between China and the Soviet bloc.

  M.Zikmund and the Tatra car

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 both of these famous world travellers had complications with communist government.

In 1968 Zikmund and Hanzelka spoke on Czechoslovak radio against the occupation of Czechoslovakia, for which they were later expelled from the writers ' club and since 1970 they have been banned from public and publishing activities.

They lost jobs, Hanzelka ended as a gardener cutting trees in a Prague park. That was another chapter of their extraordinary interestng life.

In 1997, Hanzelka and Zikmund donated boxes with their photographic archive to the Museum of South-Eastern Moravia in Zlín, which totals approximately 120,000 negatives.

Many Czech families used to have in their library at least some books written by Hanzelka-Zikmund. Here are titles of the most known ones:

Africa of dreams and reality
 With the Czechoslovak flag on Kilimanjaro
There's Argentina across the river
Through The Cordilleras
The skull hunters

For the older generation in my home country Hanzelka and Zikmund are a real legend. Though their travelling was originally meant as promotion of cars made by Tatra factory they collected an extreme amount of photos, films and other documentation on different nations and cultures. Their books were translated to 11 languages and became important information on life about 60 to 70 years ago.

Hanzelka and Zikmund welcomed at  home

Let´s hope world will open again for such adventurous travelling !

                                                                                                              Margaret