Karl Bushby, a British former paratrooper, finished his 28-year walk around the world on Monday, 2 November 2026, arriving at his mother’s home in Hull, England, after about 31 000 miles.
As reported by The Associated Press, Bushby set off from Punta Arenas, Chile, on Sunday, 1 November 1998, aged 29. He went on to cover about 31 000 miles (50 000 km) across four continents and 30 countries, and he was 57 when he finally got home.
How the Karl Bushby walk began
Not many people can say they took the long way home, but Bushby can. The plan started with a birthday card from his father, Keith, in the mid-1990s, and became a goal to walk from the southern tip of South America back to Hull, a route known as the Goliath Expedition.
The obstacles on Karl Bushby’s route
The walk was never a straight line. Bushby was jailed for 18 days in Panama in 2001 after crossing a restricted border zone near the Darién Gap, and in 2006 he crossed the Bering Strait on the ice and was jailed in Russia for entering illegally. Visa problems then kept him in Russia for nearly 10 years.
Russia refused him a visa in 2012, so he walked from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., in protest. The 2008 financial crash and Covid-19 in 2020 added delays. To avoid boats and planes, he swam the Caspian Sea and the English Channel, where his father and brothers met him on the beach in Dover in October 2026.
Karl Bushby arrives home in Hull
Bushby was welcomed at Hull City Hall before he reached his mother’s house, where journalists, a documentary crew and a crowd with a “Welcome Home Son” banner were waiting. He joked with the crowd as soon as he arrived.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Bushby said. “Is that it, is it done?”
His mother, Angela Bushby, greeted him at the house he left in 1998 with the words “Where have you been?” He had not seen her in a decade. As she wrapped her arms around him and wept, Bushby joked, “Behave yourself, mother.”
“They say it takes a village but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby said.
He also reunited with his son, Adam, 36, and met his 12-year-old granddaughter for the first time. At a news conference later, he said it was “kind of almost shocking to see my mother after so long”, and described the final stretch as “a week of lasts”.
“It’s like stepping across the event horizon into a black hole,” Bushby said of finishing.
Bushby’s next chapter is already booked. He has six speaking engagements lined up over the next two months, a sequel planned to his memoir Giant Steps and a documentary by Werner Herzog in the works.
Sources
- Associated Press, Karl Bushby embraces his mother as he completes his 28-year walk around the world (2 November 2026)
- Associated Press, Karl Bushby completes 28-year, 31,000-mile walk around world (2 November 2026)
- CTV News, This British man walked around the world in 28 years. Now he's returning home.
