Karl Bushby: UK man returns home after 28-year trek around the world
Karl Bushby has completed his 28-year journey to walk around the world by returning to his mother's home in northern England.
An adventurer who has been walking around the world for almost three decades has finished his trek in England, ending a 50,000km journey at the house where he grew up.
Karl Bushby has hacked through jungles in Central America, crossed the ice between Alaska and Russia and last month swam across the English Channel on the final stretch of a voyage made entirely under his own steam.
Hundreds of cheering supporters greeted the 57-year-old in the square of his home city of Hull on Monday morning.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“After 28 years, you just couldn’t ask for more than this,” he told the crowd, before pushing on with his few possessions in a trolley, a spare tyre which will now never be needed slung on top.
“I guess I’ll be seeing you around,” he added.
He then headed for his family home where his mother, his 36-year-old son and a 12-year-old granddaughter were waiting.
Bushby embraced his emotional mother Angela outside her row house in Hull, which he left in 1998.
They were surrounded by journalists, a documentary film crew and a large crowd outside the home that had a banner saying “Welcome Home Son.”
“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 served in the British Army’s Parachute Regiment in his 20s.
After the breakdown of his marriage he drew a line on a world map and set off, inspired by his father who had wondered if it was possible to walk from London to New York.
Carrying a tent, a few hundred dollars and a cheap plastic camera, he started in Chile and headed north through the Americas, crossing from Alaska to Russia, Mongolia and China, and back through Europe after swimming the Caspian Sea.
“Sometimes the monotony is incredible. You’re in deserts and the landscape doesn’t change for days to weeks. That can get a little mind-bending. The same with the Arctic,” he told Reuters last year.
He originally expected to spend about 10 years on the road but he had not anticipated the obstacles he’d face, amongst them a brief imprisonment in Panama, being held at gunpoint in Mexico and detention by Russian authorities for crossing the border illegally, not to mention delays from the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is what an odyssey in the 21st century looks like,” he told the Telegraph newspaper.
“Half of it is literally dealing with these bureaucratic geopolitical problems, not just the environmental hurdles. There are some times where the solution is just to wait.”
Bushby told the BBC he has only spent about 15 of the 28 years walking, returning to Mexico periodically to sort out visas, logistics and corporate and media sponsorship deals.
A feature-length documentary about his journey is in production, and Bushby is planning to embark on a speaking tour around England in the coming weeks.
with AP
