Unfold AnimatedYouTubeInstagram

28 YEARS ON FOOT?! Karl Bushby, the Man Who Walked Around the World

Full animated episode, 9:28. Published 2026-11-04.

Who is Karl Bushby, the man who walked around the world? He walked for 28 years, every step of the route on foot, from the far south of Chile home to Hull.

Watch next: Could 2 People Repopulate the Earth? https://youtu.be/oNtbI2TmUjQ

Topics covered: Karl Bushby, the man who walked around the world, Karl Bushby arrives home, 28 years walking around the world, the Goliath Expedition, crossing the Bering Strait on foot, the Darién Gap, swimming the Caspian Sea, swimming the English Channel, the homecoming in Hull.

In 1998 a former paratrooper from Hull set off from the far south of Chile to walk home: no cars, no trains, no boats, every mile on the route on foot. The plan was twelve years, give or take. It took twenty-eight, a frozen sea, a jungle with no road, a ban, a pandemic and two swims, and on November 2, 2026 he finally reached his mother's door in Hull.

We follow the whole route through one paper pop-up book, page by page, mile by mile, from Punta Arenas to a street in Hull.

Chapters

0:00 Karl Bushby arrives home in Hull

0:36 Who is Karl Bushby?

1:29 Patagonia to the Darién Gap on foot

2:21 North America

3:06 Karl Bushby and the Bering Strait

4:15 Banned from Russia

5:08 The waiting years

5:57 The Caspian Sea swim

Transcript

On a street in Hull, in the north of England, a man is pushing a battered cart toward his mother's front door. To get here, he slept on a frozen sea that cracked under his tent... crossed a jungle with no road... and swam across open sea. Twice. Picture your own front door. Now imagine not walking back through it for twenty-eight years.

He left with a few hundred dollars. The plan was twelve years, give or take. It started in the mid-1990s, with a birthday card. Karl Bushby, a former paratrooper from Hull, got one from his father, and it told the story of two soldiers arguing over whether you could walk from London to New York, across the Bering Strait.

Karl turned the idea around. Start at the very bottom of South America... and walk home to Hull, in unbroken footsteps. About thirty-six thousand miles. Twelve years, give or take. He called it the Goliath Expedition, and it came with two rules. One: no cars, no trains, no boats, every mile on the route on foot.

Two: no going home until it's done. November 1st, 1998. Punta Arenas, in the far south of Chile. Karl is twenty-nine, and he's pulling a cart: a modified golf trolley known as The Beast. He heads north at about eighteen miles a day, through Argentina, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Then the road simply stops. Between South and Central America lies the Darién Gap: two hundred miles of roadless jungle, about two months on foot, through a region that at the time resembled a war zone.

He makes it through. And his reward on the other side: eighteen days in a cell in Panama, for crossing without a visa. He walks on through Central America, and in 2002 he crosses into the United States at Nogales, Arizona. On New Year's Day 2003, in Montana, The Beast is stolen outside a bar.

It turns up later... in a quarry. Somewhere in Canada, he tries pushing the cart instead of pulling it, and finds it easier. Rides on the route, so far: zero. By 2005, he's in Alaska, waiting for the one thing his route needs next. For the sea itself to freeze. This next stretch is the one the whole plan hinged on.

The Bering Strait, between Alaska and Russia, is under sixty miles across. In winter it freezes, but the ice never holds still. In March 2006, Karl and fellow adventurer Dimitri Kieffer set out across it. The ice drifts under them as they walk, so the crossing turns into nearly a hundred and fifty miles of moving ice, in fourteen days.

Imagine lying in a tent where the floor is the sea. One night, the ice breaks up under their tent. There's a polar bear. Their sleds end up in the sea. And still, they make it to Russia... where border guards detain Karl on arrival, for not coming in through a port of entry. Fifty-seven days in detention.

A court wants him deported. An appeal lets him stay. Then, in 2008, the financial crash takes his sponsors with it, and Karl spends years waiting in Mexico. When he can go back to Russia, it's in short visa windows. In 2012, his visa is refused. Then comes a five-year ban. So he does what he does best.

He walks the wrong way: more than three thousand miles across America, to Russia's embassy in Washington. Not one of those miles counts toward the route. And in 2014, the ban is lifted. Back in Russia, he picks up where he'd stopped. All told, it takes him nearly a decade to cross one country: Russia, where the visas and the weather allow only a few months of walking a year.

Then Mongolia, in 2017, and across the Gobi. China, partly under police escort. Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan. Turkmenistan. And then the border with Iran, which won't let a British passport in. Then COVID shuts the world, and he's back in Mexico, waiting again, for the world to reopen. So, of those twenty-eight years, roughly half he could walk.

The rest, he waited. With Iran closed to him, and boats against the rules, the way west runs across the Caspian Sea. So he swims. From Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, about a hundred and eighty miles, with fellow walker Angela Maxwell and two Azerbaijani swimmers. It takes about a month: two three-hour swims a day, nights on the boat, and every morning, back in the water, picking up where they'd stopped.

The boat is for sleeping, never for going forward. If one length of your local pool feels long... imagine a month of lengths, where the far wall is another country. From Azerbaijan, he walks on through Georgia and into Turkey, and in spring 2025 he crosses the Bosphorus into Europe, his first time on the continent since 1998.

Then Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Belgium and France, with Europe's visa clock letting him stay only ninety days in every hundred and eighty, then sending him out to Mexico and back. At the coast, the Channel Tunnel says no. So, once again, he swims: about twenty hours of swimming, spread over three days. On October 5th, he comes ashore on Shakespeare Beach, near Dover.

His first time on UK soil in twenty-eight years. Fish and chips, in Dover. Then about two hundred and fifty miles north, on foot. We build every page of this book by hand. If you like long journeys told slowly, subscribe, there's one more page to go. Monday, November 2nd, 2026. A civic welcome at City Hall.

Hundreds of people in the city centre, and a TV helicopter overhead. Then the last few steps. Karl pushes The Beast up his mother's street, under a Welcome Home Son banner, and hugs his mum at her door. He was twenty-nine when he left. He's fifty-seven now. The counters stop. Twenty-eight years. Around thirty countries, on four continents.

Rides on the route: zero. He walked about thirty-one thousand miles... and he says the world carried him. The plan said twelve years, give or take. That's quite a lot of take. Your turn. If you had to walk home from anywhere on Earth, no planes, no boats, no rides, where would you start? Tell us in the comments.

A new question unfolds every Friday.

Watch on YouTubeSubscribe

More from Unfold

Unfold Animated. Funny cartoons that make you smarter. No AI images, no AI video. Real facts, checked.