Former British paratrooper Karl Bushby hugged his mother Angela outside her house in Hull on November 2, ending a walk of about 31,000 miles that began in southern Chile on November 1, 1998, and took 28 years instead of the 12 he once expected.
He left the same house at 29. He came back at 57, to a banner that read “Welcome Home Son”, a documentary crew and hundreds of people in the street, according to the Associated Press and Explorersweb.
“They say it takes a village, but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby said. “I didn’t do this alone. There was a big team. The biggest team. Earth.”
“Is that it, is it done?”
The last day started with a civic welcome in the city center. He joked an apology to the crowd for the long wait, the AP reported, then asked: “Is that it, is it done?”
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Helicopter footage then showed him ringed by supporters as he pushed his cart through the streets toward his mother’s home, where the final steps of the Goliath Expedition ended.
Two rules, about $500 and a cart called The Beast
Bushby set off from Punta Arenas, at the southern tip of South America, with around $500, a tent, a cheap plastic camera and a two-wheeled cart he calls The Beast, Explorersweb reported.
He gave himself two rules. He could not use any transport, not even a bicycle or kayak, to move the route forward, and he could not return to the UK until he finished on foot.
He was not a funded athlete. In the early years he had no sponsors and lived on gas station food or whatever locals gave him, according to Explorersweb.
When visas or money stopped him, he could fly elsewhere and wait. But each time he came back, he had to restart from the exact point where he had stopped walking.
A birthday card and a line on a map
The idea came from his father, Keith, an army veteran. In a birthday card in the mid-1990s, he described an argument among special forces soldiers about walking from London to New York over the Bering land bridge.
Bushby traced the route on a world map, then extended it south through the Americas to the tip of Chile, so the walk would end at his own front door in England.
He first thought the distance could be covered in about five years. “We suspected that it was 12 years plus,” he told the AP. “Never in our wildest dreams would we ever have imagined 28 years.”
18 days in a Panama cell
The Americas came first. In 2001 he crossed the Darién Gap, the roadless jungle between Colombia and Panama, a stretch that most travelers go around, Explorersweb noted.
Leaving the jungle did not free him. After crossing a restricted border zone without the right visa, he was held for 18 days in Panama before he could continue north.
14 days on the ice of the Bering Strait
Alaska was a warning. He had to be rescued by helicopter after an ice floe he was on broke away from the coast, and he faced a standoff with a polar bear, Explorersweb reported.
The crossing that made him famous came in March 2006. With adventurer Dimitri Kieffer, he spent 14 days walking the shifting ice between Alaska and Russia, pulling 90 kg sleds at around minus 30°C.
At points they swam through slush in dry suits. “We actually had to evacuate the tent during the night because the thing started to break apart beneath us,” he told The New York Times.
When they reached Russia, the pair were detained for entering the country without permission, and they faced possible deportation, according to the AP.
90 days in, 90 days out
Russia took almost a decade. His tourist visa allowed only 90 days in every 180, so he walked in short stints and left the country between them, Explorersweb reported.
The 2008 financial crisis cost him major sponsors, Al Jazeera reported. He resumed in 2011, was refused a new visa in 2012 and received a five-year entry ban in 2013.
His answer was another walk. He covered about 5,000 km from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, to draw attention to his case, and eventually got the papers he needed.
Swimming the Caspian and the Channel
From Russia he continued through Mongolia and China, Al Jazeera reported. To avoid boats, he swam across the Caspian Sea on the way toward Europe.
The last big obstacle was the English Channel. He swam it in October, landed in England and began the final leg north from Dover on October 9, according to the AP.
The numbers behind 28 years
The AP counts 31,000 miles across four continents and 30 countries. Al Jazeera and Explorersweb put the distance at about 50,000 km, and Explorersweb counts more than 10,000 days on the expedition.
Divided across 28 years, 31,000 miles works out to just over 1,100 miles a year, a reminder of how much of the time went into waiting for visas, money and the right season.
What comes after the walk
A feature-length documentary about the journey is in production, and Bushby plans a speaking tour around England in the coming weeks, Al Jazeera reported.
The end worries him. “My purpose and reason for living is about to end,” he told The Washington Post as he neared Hull. “It’s going to be difficult.”
Long missions have their own way of changing people. Last week, four NASA volunteers walked out of a Mars habitat after 378 days sealed inside a test that also had to end at a door.
After 10,000 days with a single goal, how does a man who walked home from Chile learn to stay in one place?
