28 years and 50,000km on foot: how Karl Bushby walked home

His mother, Angela, was waiting under a banner that read “Welcome Home Son”. Karl Bushby walked up to her door in north Hull on Monday 2 November 2026. The last time he had been there was 1998. She hugged him and asked, according to AP: “Where have you been?”

The answer covers 28 years, four continents, some 30 countries and about 50,000km.

Karl Bushby facing the crowd in Queen Victoria Square, Hull. Photo: Hull City Council.

A birthday card

The idea began in the mid-1990s with a birthday card from his father, Keith, an army veteran. It mentioned a debate about whether you could walk from London to New York by way of the Bering Strait. Karl, a former paratrooper, set himself two rules: no transport to move forward, and no going home except on foot.

On 1 November 1998 he started walking in Punta Arenas, at the southern tip of Chile, with a cart, a tent and a few hundred dollars. He expected it to take about 12 years.

The journey, stage by stage

Follow the whole route on this map, with the kilometres, the countries and the key moments.

Open the full-screen map with every milestone. Approximate route drawn by Happy News of the Day.

From Patagonia to the Bering ice

He walked north through Chile, across the Atacama Desert, then Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. In 2001 he crossed the Darién Gap, about 200km of roadless jungle and swamp between Colombia and Panama, and spent 18 days in detention in Panama. Then came Central America, Mexico, the United States, Canada and Alaska.

In March 2006 he crossed the Bering Strait on foot over the frozen sea with adventurer Dimitri Kieffer: 14 days zigzagging across the ice. When they reached Russia, they were detained for not entering through an official border crossing.

Almost ten years to cross Russia

Russia was the longest stage. His visas only allowed a few months of walking at a time, the 2008 financial crash cost him his sponsors, and in 2013 he was banned from entering for five years. In protest, he walked about 5,000km from Los Angeles to the Russian embassy in Washington. The ban was lifted in 2014.

In August 2017 he reached Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, and crossed the Gobi Desert with a camel caravan. He went on through China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, but was refused entry to Iran. Visas and the pandemic then left him stuck for years.

Two seas, swimming

To avoid Iran and Russia, in 2024 he swam the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan: 288km in a month, with adventurer Angela Maxwell. In 2025 he crossed Georgia and Turkey, and in Istanbul he set foot in Europe again.

Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, Belgium and France still lay ahead. As a British citizen he could only spend 90 days in every 180 in the Schengen area, so more than once he had to stop and wait outside it. On 5 October 2026 he swam ashore at Shakespeare Beach near Dover, after about 20 hours in the water spread over three days.

Whenever the journey stopped, he later went back to the exact spot where he had left off.

Karl Bushby with the Lord Mayor of Hull, Maria Coward. Photo: Hull City Council.

“It took a world”

On Sunday he walked over the Humber Bridge with his father and brother. On Monday hundreds of people were waiting for him in Queen Victoria Square, outside City Hall. “For 28 years – 10,229 days – Hull has been waiting for your return,” the Lord Mayor, Maria Coward, told him. Hull East MP Karl Turner read out a message of congratulations from the prime minister.

“They say it takes a village but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby said. Speaking to The Washington Post, he summed up the people he had met along the way: “I’ve met 99.9999% of the very best of humanity.”

Karl Bushby waves to the people of Hull. Photo: Hull City Council.

After the civic reception he had about 5km left to his mother’s house. There he met his granddaughter for the first time.

Karl Bushby’s cart in Hull on Monday. Photo: Hull City Council.

What comes next

Bushby is 57. Ahead of him are a speaking tour around England, a sequel to his memoir Giant Steps and a documentary about the journey by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, according to AP. He admits that stopping is daunting: “It’s like stepping across the event horizon into a black hole.”

Hull City Hall, ready to welcome him. Photo: Hull City Council.

Karl Bushby during the civic reception. Photo: Hull City Council.