Karl Bushby embraced his weeping mother in his arms Monday as he returned to his northern England home to complete a 28-year odyssey to walk around the world
"Where have you been?” his mother, Angela, asked as he arrived outside the home he left in 1998 that was now decked with a banner saying "Welcome Home Son.”
He didn’t need to tell her.
Bushby set out from Punta Arenas, Chile, on Nov. 1, 1998, and walked 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) across four continents and 30 countries to get home. He navigated shifting ice over the Bering Strait and swam across the Caspian Sea and English Channel to avoid taking a boat or plane – or any transport – to propel him forward.
He vowed not to return until he could complete the journey on foot. It was an eye-opening adventure full of danger and drudgery that was interrupted for years at a time by the unexpected: the 2008 financial crash that sapped funding from sponsors, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and mountains of bureaucratic red tape to get across international borders.
On the final day of the journey, Bushby pushed his cart toward a hero’s welcome at city hall before setting off for the last stretch to see his mother.
"Sorry to keep you waiting,” he joked to the crowd of hundreds who cheered his arrival. "Is that it, is it done?”
The ex-paratrooper said he looked like he was 10 years old when he left his mother's row house at the age of 29. He returned at 57 – softer, grayer and weathered, but far more worldly.
"They say it takes a village, but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby said. "The kindness of strangers, so many, from individuals to nation-states, got me back here today. I didn’t do this alone. There was a big team. The biggest team. Earth.”
Bushby had a thirst for adventure, but his mission only came into focus when his father, Keith, sent him a birthday card in the mid-90s. His dad, an army veteran himself, mentioned an argument two special forces troops had about the possibility of walking from London to New York over the Bering land bridge, believed by some scientists to have been used by early humans to migrate from Asia to the Americas at a time of lower sea levels.
Perilous jungles, scorching deserts and frozen tundra slowed him down, but bureaucratic holdups brought his adventure to a halt for long periods.
Bushby originally calculated the distance could be covered in about five years, but he knew that was unrealistic.
"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.”
He dodged Colombia's armed conflict in the dangerous Darien Gap, the roadless and rugged jungle, rainforest and mountains between South and Central America in 2001, and was then jailed for 18 days after crossing a restricted border zone in Panama.
After being airlifted to safety during the 56-mile (90-kilometer) Bering Strait crossing in 2006 with American adventurer Dimitry Kieffer, they started again and faced a standoff with a polar bear, survived near-death plunges into freezing waters and almost lost all their supplies when their sleds plunged in the sea. After managing the rare crossing, the pair were jailed and faced deportation for entering Russia illegally.
It took Bushby almost 10 years to make his way through Russia in fits and starts because of visa struggles and weather that only allowed travel a few months a year. When Russia denied him a visa in 2012, Bushby walked in protest from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., which eventually led to him getting the proper paperwork.
Bushby has met several times over the decades with family members who have met up with him on his journey. He was greeted on the beach in Dover by his father and brothers after crossing the Channel last month.
He reunited with Adam, his 36-year-old son from an early marriage whom he had rarely seen, and he met his 12-year-old granddaughter for the first time, which he said was amazing.
Bushby hadn't seen his mother in a decade, setting the stage for an emotional and somewhat awkward reunion captured amid a throng of cameras and a documentary film crew.
"Behave yourself, mother,” he joked, as his mother wrapped her arms around him and wept. "Get yourself together.”
He said he had long tried to imagine that moment he would return to find his mother at the gate where he left her so long ago. He said it was an emotional reunion that was "one great, big, blurry mess” he was trying to process.
"It was kind of almost shocking to see my mother after so long,” he said at a news conference later. "She’s changed a lot. We’ve all changed a lot in that time.”
In the final days of his trip, Bushby spoke of his anxiety over the trip ending, not knowing what he would do next and coming to terms with having to live in his mom’s basement.
"It’s like stepping across the event horizon into a black hole,” he told The Associated Press (AP). "I have no idea what’s about to happen in my life.”
There will be plenty to keep him busy. Six speaking engagements are scheduled in the next two months, a sequel to his memoir "Giant Steps" is due, and German filmmaker Werner Herzog is making a documentary on his trek.
He expects to struggle with the ups and downs other adventurers have experienced after long journeys.
"The only way I think, you know, you get over that is just get another mission, another passion and get busy,” he said. "That’s what I intend on doing.”
