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After nearly three decades abroad, a British adventurer finally returned home.
Karl Bushby ended his 50,000-kilometre trek at his boyhood home in Hull, England, on Monday afternoon after spending 28 years hiking around the globe.
“After 28 years, you just couldn’t ask for more than this,” he told the crowd. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”
According to Reuters, Bushby then headed for his family home where his mother, his 36-year-old son and a 12-year-old granddaughter were waiting.
He was a 29-year-old ex-paratrooper when he walked to a Royal Air Force base in Oxford and took a flight to South America.
He started his journey in Punta Arenas, Chile, on Nov. 1, 1998. From there, he walked across four continents and 30 countries. He crossed the Bering Strait ice, swam the Caspian Sea and the English Channel as part of his journey. Except for his trusty push cart, he did not use a boat, a plane, a bicycle or any other form of transport.
On the final leg of the journey, Bushby reportedly was surrounded by supporters as he pushed his cart toward home after getting a hero’s welcome earlier in the day at city hall.
Bushby served in the British Army through his 20s. After the dissolution of his marriage, he drew a line on a map, and away he went.
Longer than expected
“Sometimes the monotony is incredible,” Bushby told Reuters last year. “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.”
At first, he planned to spend approximately a dozen years on the road, but he was delayed several times.
Notably, he was imprisoned in Panama for 18 days, held at gunpoint in Mexico and was detained by Russian authorities for entering the country illegally. He was also waylaid by the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis.
“You just dump a whole bucket full of reality on that,” he said. “We suspected that it was 12 years plus. And the plus was a big plus. But never in our wildest dreams would we ever have imagined 28 years.”
Bushby told the BBC that he has only spent about 15 of the 28 years walking, the remainder of this time tied up in other details.
ganderson@postmedia.com