After nearly three decades on foot, Karl Bushby has finally made it back to Hull. Hundreds turned out for a civic welcome in his hometown, where the 57-year-old former paratrooper gave a short speech — then walked the last few steps to his mother's house, the same door he left in 1998.
The Goliath Expedition, as it became known, started at Punta Arenas in southern Chile on 1 November 1998. Bushby had about $500, a supply cart nicknamed The Beast, and a simple pair of rules: no transport of any kind could advance the route, and he could not return to the UK until he could walk through his front door. He estimated 12 years. It took 28, covering more than 50,000km across the Americas, the Bering Strait, Russia, Central Asia and Europe.
The idea came from a birthday card from his father describing a debate over whether you could walk from London to New York via the Bering Strait. Bushby traced the line on a map — then extended it all the way south to Chile's tip and home to England.
The journey was rarely romantic. He was attacked by a mob in Peru, slipped through Colombia's conflict zones, and crossed the Darien Gap. In March 2006, he and French adventurer Dimitri Kieffer spent 14 days crossing the Bering Strait on foot — 90kg sleds, temperatures near -30C, and swims through slush ice in dry suits. Russia detained them on arrival, and Russian bureaucracy would consume years: 90-day visa stints, a denial, then a five-year entry ban in 2013. Bushby's protest was to walk roughly 5,000km from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Iran's borders stayed closed, forcing a detour through the Kyzylkum Desert and an improvised swim-float crossing of the Caspian Sea with fellow trekker Angela Maxwell. Then the pandemic added more waiting years, mostly spent in Mexico. His rules allowed flights to escape dead ends — but he always resumed from the exact spot he'd left.
The human cost is part of the story. His son Adam was eight when Bushby left; he's now 36, with a 12-year-old daughter her grandfather has never met. Bushby has joked about the culture shock ahead: going from a global expedition to living with his mother at 57.
For travellers, the tale is a reminder of what human-powered travel can look like at its extreme — and of the quiet kindness Bushby says he met everywhere. "I've been welcomed in by the poorest of the poor," he told The Washington Post. His route doubles as an unofficial bucket list: Patagonia, the Darien Gap, the Bering Strait, the Gobi, the Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan. Few will walk them. But they're all reachable the ordinary way — and Bushby's story makes a compelling case for going slowly.
Story via ExplorersWeb
