Karl Bushby: the man who walked home for 28 years, finally at the door

Karl Bushby, a 57-year-old former British paratrooper, has finished walking around the world. On Monday, 2 November, he walked up to his mother’s terraced house in Hull, in northern England, 28 years and one day after setting off on foot from Punta Arenas at the southern tip of Chile. His name has been one of the top Google searches in Pakistan this week.

His mother, Angela, hugged him outside the front door under a “Welcome Home Son” banner. “They say it takes a village, but literally it took a world to get me here,” he said.

Two rules, 28 years

Bushby called it the Goliath Expedition and gave himself two rules when he left on 1 November 1998, aged 29. He could not use any vehicle to move forward, and he could not go home until he arrived on foot, even if someone he loved died while he was away.

He kept both. The walk covered about 50,000 kilometres (around 31,000 miles), more than 10,000 days and, by one estimate, 75 million steps.

The route, in short

• The Americas: north from Chile through South and Central America, including the lawless Darien Gap jungle between Colombia and Panama, where armed gangs threatened him. He was also jailed in Panama.
• The Bering Strait: in 2006 he crossed the frozen sea ice from Alaska to Russia, and met a polar bear in Siberia.
• Russia and Asia: he was detained after entering Russia, and Russian visa bans held him up for years. He went on through Mongolia and China into Central Asia.
• The Caspian Sea: to avoid the war in Ukraine, he swam across the Caspian over 31 days, a crossing reported as a first.
• Home: he crossed Europe, swam the English Channel from France in October, landed near Dover and walked the last stretch north to Hull.

He planned it to take about 12 years. Lost sponsors after the 2008 financial crisis, illness, visas and two wars stretched it to 28.

Not everyone is cheering

The homecoming has also started an argument online. Some commentators have called the walk a tragedy rather than a triumph, pointing to the decades away from family, and the years of hardship. Supporters answer that he set his own rules, kept them and came home safe.

Hull City Hall held a civic reception for him. A feature-length documentary about the walk is being made, and he plans a speaking tour of England next.