Yesterday Karl Bushby, 57, returned to England after 28 years away from home: he returned to his mother’s home in Hull after completing what he called Goliath Expeditionwhich began in Chile in Punta Arenas on 1 November 1998. A journey on foot that the man, a former British Army paratrooper, then twenty-nine years old, had estimated could have lasted approximately 12 years, and which required more than double that, due to geographical and geopolitical reasons, unpredictable financial crises and pandemics, bureaucratic problems and denied visas.
In these 28 years Bushby has crossed four continents without ever using means of transport along the way: he walked for thousands of km, crossing the Bering Strait, swimming across the Caspian Sea and, last October, the English Channel, without ever returning home before yesterday: 10,299 days, around 58,000 km traveled (around 36,000 miles according to the Guardian) and 29 countries crossed. Bushby is estimated to have walked over 75 million steps. “The plan,” he declared in a recent interview with the Washington Post, “was to do something extraordinary.” He crossed Patagonia, the Andes, Central America and Mexico, the United States, Russia, Mongolia, part of Asia, several European countries, until returning home on October 5th. An undertaking which, he told the Guardian in an interview last October, “was very boring”, and which the famous director Werner Herzog will recount in the documentary A Walk For Life.
A mostly solo trip, in which he was accompanied by The Beastthe trolley on which he transported food, equipment, camping material (replaced after about 3 years by Beast 2, built in Nicaragua and survived until arrival in Hull), and, occasionally, by someone who shared part of the road with him, such as his friend Angela Maxwell (who also took part in the swimming crossing of the Caspian Sea). As he himself underlines, no one is capable of accomplishing such a feat alone: ”There was a support network that allowed me not to give up and to keep going,” he says.
The rules of the journey and the map of the stages by Karl Bushby
Karl Bushby’s journey began on November 1, 1998 in Punta Arenas, Chile, with just 500 dollars in his pocket, no sponsor and two fundamental rules to respect:
- No transport to advance (no use of means of transport to progress);
- No going home, except on foot (no return home, unless it was on foot).
This mission was inspired by a birthday card his father received in the mid-1990s: it contained a reference to an argument between two soldiers about a seemingly impossible feat of walking from London to New York via the Bering Strait. Here Bushby effectively became the first person to have crossed the world on foot without interruptions (we will see shortly that it wasn’t exactly like that!), crossing 29 countries – he had already broken the record for the longest journey on foot ever made without interruptions, with 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles, a distance greater than the circumference of the earth).
The site of the same name, created to tell the world the stages of his journey, divides them as follows:
- 1998-2000, from Chile to Colombia, crossing Patagonia and the Atacama desert, the Andes, to arrive in Colombia, in Medellìn on 1 November 2000;
- 2000-2001, the “Darién gap”: the Colombia-Panama crossing is among the most challenging parts of the journey, 200 km of jungle and swamps populated by guerrillas and paramilitary groups. The crossing of the area involved over two months of planning, almost as if it were a military undertaking, while he pretended to be homeless so as not to be kidnapped and, upon arriving in Panama, he spent about 18 days in prison due to his irregular entry;
- 2001-2005, Central America and North America, from Panama to Alaska, passing through Mexico, United States, Canada;
- 17-31 March 2006, the Bering Strait: together with the French-American adventurer Dimitri Kieffer he attempted and succeeded in an undertaking that many before them had failed. To cross a strait just 93 km wide they traveled about 241 km in 14 days, following a complex zigzag itinerary. As if that wasn’t enough, once they arrived in Uelen, a village in the Russian region of Chukotka, they were stopped by border guards for having entered outside an authorized entry point, with 57 days of detention;
- 2006-2011, Siberia. Those dedicated to crossing Russia were the longest and most difficult years due to military zones, extreme climatic conditions, visas and bureaucracy, until 2007-2008, when the global financial crisis canceled the support of the sponsors gathered in the meantime, leaving him without money and without logistical help. Bushby thus retreated to Mexico until 2010, until a new sponsor allowed him to return to his path in Siberia in 2011.
- 2012-2014, back in the United States: when his visa request was rejected by Russia, Bushby had to interrupt his trip again and take a significant detour. From Los Angeles, home of his sponsor, he walked in protest to the Russian embassy in Washington, crossing the United States for 5,600 km on foot, until he obtained a visa in 2014;
- 2016-2017, the steppes of Mongolia. Bushby reached the capital Ulaanbaatar in the summer of 2017, where he spent months preparing an expedition along the ancient Silk Road with a caravan of ten camels. They traveled over 1,000 km, but due to internal disagreements the group split, and Bushby crossed the border into China alone;
- 2018-2019, China and Central Asia. China was, after Russia, another geopolitical challenge and a testing ground due to the stringent surveillance measures to which he was subjected, including cameras, biometric checks, stalking, up to the seizure of all his video equipment and his confinement in a hotel. The British embassy managed to unblock the situation, allowing him to continue, but under very strict conditions;
- 2019-2024, from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, swimming across the Caspian Sea. Bushby probably hadn’t foreseen it, but the crossing through Iran was even more problematic: first the US sanctions prevented him from receiving money from his sponsors, then there was the assassination of General Soleimani, which blocked his passage completely. In 2020, when there finally seemed to be a glimmer of hope, the COVID-19 pandemic led to Turkmenistan’s borders being closed, with people unable to pass north from Russia due to the conflict with Ukraine. Here is plan C, swimming across the Caspian Sea: 288 km achieved with the support of a team with boats and professional swimmers, for a total of 132 hours spent in the water, distributed over 31 days at sea;
- 2024-2025, from Baku, Bushby crossed Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey for 2,000 km, up to Istanbul, appearing in Europe on 25 April 2025. To land on the European continent he was allowed to cross the old Bosphorus Bridge on foot, even if normally forbidden;
- 2025-2026, the last steps along Europe, passing through several countries in central and western Europe, up to France and the English Channel, crossed in 3 days. On 5 October 2026 Bushby reached British soil at Shakespeare Beach, near Dover and its cliffs, with just 400km separating him from his mother’s home in Hull.
Pieroad, an Italian also traveled around the world on foot
An Italian has also accomplished a similar feat: Nicolò Guarrera, from Vicenza known on social media as Pieroad. Having left Malo on 9 August 2020, in the province of Vicenza, at the age of 26, he undertook a journey around the world that lasted five years, ending on 13 September 2025 with his return home after 5 years (1862 days), in the hamlet of San Tomio di Malo.
Approximately 36,000 kilometers across four continents accompanied by Ezio, the trekking stroller used to transport the necessary equipment.
Unlike Bushby, Guarrera also made sea crossings by sailboat. His itinerary took him from Europe to Latin America, up to Australia and Asia, also crossing the Atlantic Ocean by boat; on 31 August 2025 he returned to Italy, to Trieste, before concluding the journey in Malo, and his adventure is told in the book With your feet on the groundreleased this year.
