Weg van Nowak — Following a Forgotten Cyclist Across Africa

Some projects begin with a book. This one began with an obsession.

Tom Ysewijn, cycling journalist and traveller, first encountered the story of Kazimierz Nowak while planning a cycling trip through Africa. What he found was remarkable: in 1931, a near-penniless Polish journalist set off from Poznań on a bicycle with the ambition of crossing the entire African continent, south to the tip, then back again. Nowak covered roughly 40,000 kilometres over five years, documenting everything in vivid dispatches for the Polish press: the desert, the savanna, the colonial machinery grinding away at the people he met. He was likely the first person to cycle Africa in its entirety. Tom turned years of archival research into a book, Alleen door Afrika, which brought Nowak's near-forgotten story to Dutch-speaking readers. Without that book, there would be no podcast.

When Tom, actor Titus De Voogdt, and podcast maker Jeroen Franssens began exploring how to bring Nowak's journey to audio, they travelled to Poland to dig deeper into the archives. What they found in Nowak's personal letters to his wife Marys revealed a far more layered, complicated man than the heroic adventurer of legend: someone marked by doubt, tenderness and a critical eye that the newspaper articles alone never quite captured. That discovery changed everything about how they wanted to tell the story.

And then came the idea that was, by any measure, slightly unreasonable: why not actually do it themselves?

Nowak never completed one stretch of his route. In Namibia, his bicycle gave out and he was forced to continue on horseback, a gap that frustrated him for the rest of his life. In October 2025, Titus, Tom and Jeroen set out to close it. On Ridley gravel bikes, powered by nothing but their own legs, they cycled 2,200 kilometres through Namibia and Angola, retracing Nowak's missing kilometres across desert roads, gravel tracks and relentless heat.

"Along the way you feel how hard it is, but also how you slowly become a little more like Nowak."

Audiotheque came on board as producer from the very beginning, not just to record what happened in Africa, but to shape the project into something that could actually work as narrative audio. That meant months of research before a single pedal stroke: studying Nowak's original route, mapping what was logistically possible in present-day Angola, coordinating with local fixers, and building the support structure needed to keep three Belgians alive and recording in one of the least-visited countries on earth. In the studio, sound engineer Stefan and producer Louise-Marie worked to weave Jeroen's field recordings, wind across gravel, the creak of loaded bikes, campfire conversation, into a series that holds together as both a travel document and a historical portrait.

The result is Weg van Nowak (In Nowak's Tracks): eight episodes that run two journeys in parallel, a century apart. As the podcast's own description puts it:

"Two parallel stories, like mirrors beside each other, in which you see what has changed in a hundred years. It's about our journey, but also about his journey and his perspective, so essentially two journeys for the price of one."

Weg van Nowak launches on 6 June 2026.

For the full story, the route, and everything you need to know about Kazimierz Nowak: www.nowakpodcast.be