British adventurer Karl Bushby is just days away from completing his 28-year Goliath Expedition, closing in on his home city of Hull after walking more than 30,000 miles across four continents, crossing deserts, jungles, and open seas without using motorised transport to move forward.
The journey began on November 1, 1998, when a former paratrooper then aged 29 set out from Punta Arenas, Chile, with two self-imposed rules: not to use transport to advance and not to return to the UK until the entire route was finished. Now 57, Bushby is walking the final stretch toward Hull, where crowds and local officials are preparing to give him a huge welcome on Monday, November 2.
Birthday Card Inspires Trek from Southern Chile
The epic trek was sparked by a birthday card from his father, Keith, in the mid-1990s. Bushby drew a continuous line on a map across Europe, Asia, and North America before deciding to continue straight down to the tip of South America.
He set out from southern Chile with a budget of just £280. Throughout the journey, his strict rules meant that whenever visas, money, or world events forced him to pause, he had to return to the point where he stopped before continuing.
Jungles, Borders, and the Bering Strait
What was originally expected to take roughly 12 years stretched into nearly three decades as Bushby battled hostile terrain and heavy bureaucracy. Swampy jungle, scorching desert, and frozen tundra slowed him down, while mountains of red tape helped turn the endeavor into an epic dubbed the Goliath Expedition. Among his earliest major challenges was the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama, a notoriously rugged jungle without conventional roads. He floated through crocodile-infested waters to avoid a guerrilla war in Colombia.
Karl Bushby crossed the Bering Strait over shifting sea ice. After being rescued by helicopter from an ice floe drifting out to sea, they were detained for entering Russia without the correct passport stamps. Over the years, he has traversed 29 countries, encountering everything from police tracking him through China to crossing shifting ice over the Bering Strait and swimming across the Caspian Sea and English Channel.
Bureaucracy, Pandemics, and Open Water
Visa restrictions repeatedly reshaped the expedition. When he faced difficulties obtaining permission to continue through Russia, Bushby walked from Los Angeles towards the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to secure a visa.
Further delays followed when he reached Turkmenistan in 2019, soon compounded by global border closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. When geopolitical problems closed off Russia and Iran, he faced the need to cross water, leading him to spend 31 days swimming across the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, covering roughly 184 miles across the world’s largest inland body of water.
Crossing the Channel and Approaching Home
Bushby took to the water for the France-to-England crossing, completing the swim over three days, spending about 20 hours in the water.
Bushby has spent only about 15 of the 28 years actively walking, frequently retreating to Mexico or other regions where living was much cheaper between stints to wait for his next chance to return to the point where he left off.
My purpose and reason for living is about to end. It’s going to be difficult … trying to blend back into a society that you just don’t know anymore.
Karl Bushby, British adventurer
He believes that returning to a familiar life will be a challenge after spending nearly three decades traversing the globe on his ambitious journey, where his mother, Angela, will be waiting at the same family home he walked away from in 1998.