In a world of Instagrammable travel moments and growing tastes for luxury experiences, one lone adventurer has bucked the trends by completing an epic round-the-world journey on foot over the course of three decades.
Forget The Odyssey and a trip that involves a mere ten years away from home. British man Karl Bushby set out from Chile in November 1998, when he was 29 years old, and—having experienced some issues that forced pauses along the way—did not reach his home in northeast England until 2 November 2026.
The 50,000-km adventure was prompted by a marriage break-up and musings in a birthday card sent by his army veteran father about whether it was feasible to walk from London to New York over the continental crossing between Russia and Alaska—known as the Bering land bridge and believed to be a vital migration passage for Ice Age creatures such as woolly mammoths and muskoxen, as well as ancestral human hunter-gatherers.
A former paratrooper himself, Karl apparently could not resist trying the feat. Equipped with a tent, a camera, and a few hundred in US currency, he went from South to North America, headed east from Alaska to Russia, and traversed Mongolia and China. He managed to bag some sponsorship in the form of boots from Zamberlan, which he told OutThereOutdoors in 2008 had helped prevent blisters.
Brain blips, too, were a risk, he explained to Reuters in 2025, because: “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.” Thankfully, somewhere along the way he gained a Panasonic Toughbook Laptop to help keep him connected to the world, as well as an Iridium satellite phone in case of emergencies, and batteries. He also relied on “a good map, a good compass, and a Garmin GPS” and a “decent survival knife.”
Having vowed not to benefit from motorised transport, he has used a trolley, a sledge, and a backpack to lug his gear, as well as skis in places. He braved hurricanes and jungles, a Panamanian prison, an armed hold-up in Mexico, and a rescue from the icy Bering Strait waters, after which he was jailed again by Russian authorities for entering the country illegally. BBC reporting mentions, somewhat churlishly perhaps, that “only” about 15 of the 28 years were spent walking due to such problems. The COVID pandemic was another trip hazard. He even swam across the Caspian Sea and the English Channel.
28 years ago, Karl Bushby left the UK in an attempt to become the first person to circumnavigate the world on foot. Today, he arrived back in Hull for the final stretch of his journey to his mother’s house. He left at 28. He’s now home at 57. https://t.co/peL7K9XNlG
— george (@StokeyyG2) November 2, 2026
Bushby was greeted by crowds of well-wishers as he arrived back in Hull, a port city in East Yorkshire, England, and now faces the new challenge he confessed to the AFP last year: a potential identity crisis as he re-adjusts to “normal” life while also becoming the subject of a Werner Herzog documentary.
Luckily, it sounds like his mum will help keep his feet on the ground. Just like the mother of any wayward teenager on his return, she asked the now 57-year-old: “Where have you been?”
