The author of Via Czechia is Jan Hocek, a Czech sportsman and biologist, professional tour guide, photographer and travel writer. He has visited over 80 countries all over the world and hiked the most of world’s long-distance trails on all continents. As an occasional yachtsman he has explored the coast of Croatia, the Caribbean, the Seychelles or Mauritius, and wandered with his sea-kayak around the coast of New Zealand and Borneo. As part of his latest projects he is focusing on polar regions including Greenland and Antarctica. You can find out more about Jan and his work here www.hocek.cz.
He has published five travel books with his own photographs revealing his travels both around the world and his homeland, Jan’s last two-volume book edition of Via Czechia were published in 2021.
Jan devoted most of 2020 to his Via Czechia project. He planned, mapped and subsequently hiked and cycled both the Northern and Southern Trails. This provided him with the opportunity to revisit places he has been to many times before in order to monitor and photograph the condition they are in.