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Karl Bushby

Karl Bushby, the former British paratrooper who left Punta Arenas in 1998 and walked about 31,000 miles back to his mother's door in Hull in November 2026.

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On Monday, November 2, 2026, Karl Bushby walked up to his mother's house on the Sutton Park estate in Hull. A "Welcome Home Son" banner hung outside. His mother came out in tears and, according to the Associated Press, asked him: "Where have you been?"

The honest answer was most of the planet. Bushby had set off on foot from Punta Arenas, at the southern end of Chile, on November 1, 1998. The AP puts the distance at about 31,000 miles, or 50,000 kilometers, across four continents and 30 countries. Other outlets counted 29 countries, and Al Jazeera gave the distance as 31,070 miles. However it is counted, it took him 28 years and one day.

Earlier that day the city had given him a civic welcome at City Hall. "They say it takes a village but literally it took a world to get me here," he said in a speech reported by the AP. "I didn't do this alone. There was a big team. The biggest team. Earth." He was 57.

A Birthday Card and a Map of the Bering Land Bridge

Bushby grew up in Hull and served in the British Army as a paratrooper with the Parachute Regiment. The idea for the walk came from his father, Keith, also an Army veteran. In the mid-1990s Keith sent him a birthday card that mentioned an old argument among special forces soldiers: could a person walk from London to New York by crossing the Bering land bridge? Bushby took out a map and traced the route.

He planned on about 12 years. "We suspected that it was 12 years plus," he told the AP at the finish. He left at 29 with a few hundred dollars, about $500 according to the adventure news site Explorersweb, and no sponsors. He had married young, and his son Adam was eight years old when he left. Adam was 36 by the time his father came home, and Bushby met his 12-year-old granddaughter for the first time on his return.

Across the Frozen Bering Strait With Dimitry Kieffer

The route ran north through South America, Central America, and the length of North America to Alaska. In 2006 Bushby and fellow adventurer Dimitry Kieffer crossed the Bering Strait from Alaska toward Russia, a crossing the AP put at 56 miles. The AP account says the pair nearly lost their supplies and had to be airlifted to safety. When they reached Russian territory they were jailed and faced deportation for entering the country illegally.

That arrest was the start of a long fight over paperwork. Russia refused him a visa in 2012, and in 2013 imposed a five-year entry ban, according to Explorersweb. Bushby answered by walking again, this time from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The AP reports that the protest walk eventually got him the documents he needed. Getting across Russia took almost 10 years.

Thirty-One Days on the Caspian Sea

By the 2020s the planned route west was blocked. Russia and Iran were closed off for geopolitical reasons, so Bushby had to cross the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan by water. He is not a strong swimmer. He spent 31 days in the sea wearing a wetsuit and a flotation vest, using a slow method he named "floatimming," the AP reported. A Fox News photo caption dates his arrival in Azerbaijan to September 2024.

The last sea crossing came in October 2026. Bushby had asked to walk through the Channel Tunnel and was refused, so he swam the English Channel instead. The Yorkshire Post reported that he reached Shakespeare Beach near Dover on Monday, October 5, after 20 hours in the water spread over three days. The final weeks were a walk north through England to Hull.

Beau Willimon, Jordan Tappis, and a Herzog Documentary

Money was a problem for most of the walk. He picked up sponsors in the United States during the early years, then lost the major ones in the 2008 financial crisis, according to Explorersweb. For the 16 years after that, the AP reports, his main support came from a production company founded by "House of Cards" creator Beau Willimon and music producer Jordan Tappis. The same company is backing a documentary about the walk by Werner Herzog. Fundraisers filled some of the gaps.

No published figure shows how much the sponsors or the production company paid, and no major financial outlet has estimated his net worth. FamousBio does not publish one. The few sites that print a number give no source for it.

Life on the Road and After It

The walk took up most of his adult life. The AP reports that he had two long relationships on the road, one of seven years with a woman from Colombia and one of three years with a woman from Japan. Before the finish he told the AP he was anxious about the prospect of living in his mother's basement.

At his homecoming he described the end of the journey this way: "It's like stepping across the event horizon into a black hole. I have no idea what's about to happen in my life." One plan he has mentioned, Explorersweb reported, is retraining as a teacher. He gave talks in schools along the route and loved doing it.

Sources

Filed Under Topics

#Adventure#Walking#Hull#Parachute Regiment

Nidhi Razdan

Nidhi Razdan anchored NDTV prime time for two decades, quit in 2020 for a Harvard post that proved to be a scam, and married Omar Abdullah in October 2026.

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