Karl Bushby, a British adventurer, has completed a 28-year, 31,000-mile journey around the world on foot, returning to his mother’s home in northern England.
The 57-year-old embraced his weeping mother, Angela, on Monday after arriving at the home he left in 1998. The house was decorated with a banner reading “Welcome Home Son.”
“Where have you been?” his mother asked as he arrived.
Bushby began his journey in Punta Arenas, Chile, on November 1, 1998, walking across four continents and 30 countries to reach home.
He navigated shifting ice across the Bering Strait, swam across the Caspian Sea and English Channel, and refused to use boats, planes or other transport to advance his journey.
He had vowed not to return home until he completed the expedition on foot.
The adventure was marked by dangerous terrain, extreme weather and bureaucratic challenges. It was also interrupted by the 2008 financial crash, which affected sponsorship, the COVID-19 pandemic and difficulties securing permission to cross international borders.
On the final day of his journey, Bushby pushed his cart towards a hero’s welcome at City Hall before setting off for the last stretch to see his mother.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he joked to hundreds of cheering supporters. “Is that it, is it done?”
The former paratrooper said he looked 10 years old when he left his mother’s rowhouse at 29.
He returned as a 57-year-old, softer, greyer and weathered, but with a far broader understanding of the world.
“They say it takes a village but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby said. “The kindness of strangers, so many, from individuals to nation states to get me back here today. I didn’t do this alone. There was a big team. The biggest team. Earth.”
Bushby had always been drawn to adventure, but his mission began to take shape after his father, Keith, sent him a birthday card in the mid-1990s.
His father, an army veteran, recalled an argument between two special forces soldiers about whether it was possible to walk from London to New York across the Bering land bridge.
The land bridge is believed by some scientists to have been used by early humans migrating from Asia to the Americas when sea levels were lower.
Perilous jungles, scorching deserts and frozen tundra slowed Bushby down, while bureaucratic obstacles brought his expedition to a halt for extended periods.
He initially calculated that the journey could take about five years, although he knew the estimate was unrealistic.
“You just dump a whole bucket full of reality on that,” he said. “We suspected that it was 12 years plus. And the plus was a big plus. But never in our wildest dreams would we ever have imagined 28 years.”
In 2001, Bushby avoided war in the dangerous Darién Gap, a roadless stretch of jungle, rainforest and mountains between South and Central America.
He was later jailed for 18 days after crossing a restricted border zone in Panama.
In 2006, Bushby and American adventurer Dimitry Kieffer were airlifted to safety during their 56-mile Bering Strait crossing.
The pair later resumed their journey, facing a standoff with a polar bear, near-death plunges into freezing water and the loss of supplies when their sleds plunged into the sea.
After completing the rare crossing, they were jailed and faced deportation for entering Russia illegally.
Bushby spent almost 10 years navigating Russia in stages because of visa difficulties and weather conditions that limited travel to a few months each year.
When Russia denied him a visa in 2012, he walked from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., in protest.
The demonstration eventually helped him secure the necessary paperwork.
Over the decades, Bushby reunited with family members who travelled to meet him along the route.
His father and brothers welcomed him on the beach in Dover after he crossed the English Channel last month.
He also reunited with Adam, his 36-year-old son from an earlier marriage, whom he had rarely seen, and met his 12-year-old granddaughter for the first time.
Bushby had not seen his mother in a decade, making their reunion emotional and somewhat awkward as cameras and a documentary film crew captured the moment.
“Behave yourself, mother,” he joked as she wept and he held her, rubbing her back. “Get yourself together.”
In the final days of his journey, Bushby spoke about his anxiety over the expedition ending, living in his mother’s basement and not knowing what would come next.
“It’s like stepping across the event horizon into a black hole,” he told The Associated Press. “I have no idea what’s about to happen in my life.”
Faridah Abdulkadiri
Follow us on:
