Meet Karl Bushby, the man who walks the earth

In November 1998, the year of my birth, Karl Bushby, then 29, stood at Chile’s far southern edge, near Punta Arenas, having achieved his highest goal; his lifelong commitment to walking the earth was about to begin. The Goliath Expedition has taken more than half of his lifetime.

For 27 years, Karl Bushby has not stopped walking, swimming, and having to negotiate with customs officials in a singular attempt to return to his hometown in East Yorkshire.

Karl Bushby served in the Parachute Regiment, a background that shaped the discipline and tolerance for suffering that would define the Goliath Expedition. He is a living case study in what happens when military‑instilled discipline meets a single, eccentric individual driven by a childhood ambition: to walk around the world.

Bushby completed eleven years of military service and qualified as a tactical paratrooper. 

His military discipline was not formed in isolation, it could be considered to be inherited. His father spent 24 years in the army, including service in Special Forces, and himself had been a paratrooper. 

A paratrooper is an elite soldier trained for airborne deployment, a role that demands self‑sufficiency, endurance, and an absolute capacity for suffering. For Karl's psychological manifestation to his Goliath expedition:

"I lived in the shadow of my father, not only 24 years in the army and 12 years Special forces, but an ex Paratrooper who had received top P Company recruit." — Karl Bushby

Bushby’s training included time spent in a conditioning chamber, where he internalised the idea that pain was not a deterrent, but an unavoidable condition of success.

He has successfully navigated the planet’s rawest landscapes, having walked nearly back home, but now, back in Europe, the former paratrooper finds the final leg of his Goliath Expedition defined not by wilderness, but by modern bureaucracy.

For Bushby, walking is not a lifestyle choice but a psychological necessity.

Published in his 2006 memoir, Giant Steps: An American Odyssey from Punta Arenas to the Edge of Alaska, Bushby frequently reflects on his military conditioning.

“We lived on our feet; everything we did was on foot. It was about going the distance, being self‑sufficient, and always pushing boundaries of physical endurance.” — Karl Bushby

Karl Bushby is now 56 years old. He remains largely absent from social media, aside from his Instagram account, @Bushby3000.

Questions remain about his current status under the Schengen Area’s 90‑day rule, however, one obstacle still lies ahead: the English Channel. Administrative irony for an expedition originally projected to take just eight years.

Physical Ordeal (1998–2006)

By 2001, he had reached the Darién Gap, the lawless jungle separating Panama and Colombia. Over months, his body endured jungle rot, threats from drug traffickers, and the hostility of one of the planet’s most unforgiving environments. 

Four years into the expedition, Bushby reached Panama by surviving not only the wilderness but prolonged, self‑imposed isolation spent with nature.

The Bering Strait (March 2006)

This was the expedition’s physical climax.

The Bering Strait is a volatile corridor of ice and open water where Alaska nearly touches Siberia. In March 2006, Bushby and his then‑partner, Dimitri Kieffer, spent 14 days crossing it on foot and in the water.

Walking across drifting ice required constant calculation. When the ice fractured, progress demanded immersion. Open-water swims through sub-zero temperatures became unavoidable.

Accounts describe wind‑driven currents pulling them off course, leaps between ice floes, and the ever‑present risk of polar bears. Survival depended on momentum; stopping meant freezing.

The Strait marked the point where a journey across deserts, jungles, and mountains collided with the planet’s coldest frontier. It was the ultimate measure of Bushby’s endurance.

The Political Freeze (2006-2020)

After the Americas, Bushby's adversary shifted from the natural world to bureaucracy. When he arrived in Russia, he was confined to restrictive tourist visas that typically limited him to 90 days, after which he was forced to leave the country.

Each exit required more than one international flight. When he landed back in Russia, he would start walking from the exact point where he had left off. An administrative gridlock which dragged on for years, turning the expedition into a repetive and finacially draining cycle.

The 2008 global financial crisis collapsed sponsorships, halting progress altogether. As Bushby told Dave’s Travel Corner:

“The financial crisis meant I could not return to Russia after losing sponsors. That cost me three years before I could afford to continue one of the most expensive sections of the journey.”

In 2013, a five‑year visa ban was imposed, citing his Bering Strait crossing as a technical violation. Bushby responded by walking 3,000 miles across the United States to the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC—a protest that ultimately led to the ban being overturned.

COVID‑19 delivered a final irony: a world forced to stop while a man committed to perpetual motion waited for permission to continue.

The Caspian Sea

Bushby executed the Caspian Sea Swim (August–September 2024)—a 31-day, 288-kilometre swim from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan. This was a necessary deviation to maintain the overall integrity of the journey by bypassing insurmountable walls.

I wonder about the journey that was to be undertaken on foot; my question arises as to why he would choose to swim across the Caspian Sea in the first place.

Perhaps the most potent and challenging quotes from Karl Bushby address the profound personal sacrifice of the Goliath Expedition. His commitment to the "no going home rule," he quotes. And what it means to have left his family behind. 

Bushby’s own words also reveal the deeply human cost of maintaining such a long-term commitment in solitude: "We’re not supposed to live like this," acknowledging the unnatural state of decades spent primarily alone

Bushby has walked from Turkey and is now on the last stretch across Europe; he is on his way home to Hull.

Facts Over Fantasies

A walk that began on paper maps, guided by compass and physical landmarks, Karl Bushby has traversed continents largely without the use of 21st-century conveniences. However, he may argue otherwise.

In this time since 1998, the world has transformed. He has walked past the rise and invention of social media, historic elections such as those of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and Brexit.

He has managed to cross land while climate change has accelerated dramatically, with glaciers receding, forests burning, and sea levels rising. Karl has observed the dramatic political and cultural transformations of continents from the sidelines, feeling both a part of and apart from the world he traverses while natural disasters, wars, and humanitarian crises unfolded mostly outside his immediate perception. 

As he told the Daily Express, "It would be pretty miserable if it were a no... Even the Russians let me through despite world tensions. "The difficulty of obtaining this permission highlights the absurdity of Karl's expedition's unknown conclusion, as his fate rests on a single bureaucratic paper. 

Bushby's final destination is set for September 2026.

It's the ironic nature of Karl walking around only to end up in Hull. And it's rough, which perfectly captures the understated British humour surrounding Mr Karl Bushby. 

To fathom why Bushby walks, not how far or how long, but why stopping appears psychologically impossible, his memoir must be treated as more than documentation.

In the opening chapters of Karl's Memoir. Giant Steps; an admission takes place. The life before the long walk. His role as an absent father, citing "to my son I left behind" as a tribute. 

He writes how his life destination since childhood was the fact that he would "undertake the world's longest walk ever".

IOL