Karl Bushby hugs emotional mother as he completes 28-year world tour

HULL, England (AP) — Karl Bushby hugged his crying mother Monday as he returned home to northern England to complete a 28 years of odyssey to travel around the world on foot.

“Where have you been?” asked his mother, Angela, as he arrived in front of the house he left in 1998 and which was now adorned with a banner reading “Welcome home, son.”

He didn’t need to tell her.

Bushby departed from Punta Arenas, Chile on November 1, 1998 and walked 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) across four continents and 30 countries to return home. He navigated the shifting ice of the Bering Strait and swam across the Caspian Sea and the English Channel to avoid taking a boat or plane – or any other means of 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, interrupted for years by unforeseen events: the 2008 financial crash that undermined sponsor funding, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and the mountains of bureaucratic red tape to cross international borders.

A trek made possible by kind strangers

On the last day of the trip, Bushby pushed his cart to a hero’s welcome at City Hall before leaving for the final leg to see his mother.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he joked to the crowd of hundreds cheering his arrival. “Is that it, it’s done?”

The former paratrooper said he looked like he was 10 when he moved out of his mother’s terraced house aged 29. He came back at 57 – softer, grayer and older, but much more worldly.

“They say it takes a village, but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby said. “The kindness of strangers, both individuals and nation states, allowed me to return here today. I did not do this alone. There was a great team. The greatest team. Earth.”

The idea was born with a birthday card from his father

Bushby craved adventure, but his mission only became clear when his father, Keith, sent him a birthday card in the mid-’90s. His father, himself an Army veteran, recalled an argument between two special forces soldiers about the possibility of walking from London to New York over the Bering Land Bridge, which some scientists believe was used by early humans to migrate from Asia to the Americas at a time when sea level was lower.

Perilous jungles, scorching deserts and frozen tundra slowed him down, but bureaucratic blockages interrupted his adventure for long periods.

Bushby had initially calculated that the distance could be covered in about five years, but he knew that was unrealistic.

“You’re throwing a whole bucketful of reality at this,” he said. “We suspected it was more than 12 years. And more was a big plus. But never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined 28 years.”

Danger on land and at sea followed by problems at the borders

In 2001, he avoided Colombia’s armed conflict in the dangerous Darién Gap, a wild, roadless jungle, rainforest and mountains between South and Central America. He was then imprisoned for 18 days after crossing a restricted border zone into Panama.

After being airlifted to safety during the 56-mile (90-kilometer) Bering Strait crossing in 2006 with American adventurer Dimitry Kieffer, they set out again and faced a standoff with a polar bear, survived near-death plunges into the frigid waters and nearly lost all their supplies when their sleds plunged into the sea. After successfully making the rare crossing, both men were imprisoned and threatened with deportation for entering Russia illegally.

It took Bushby almost 10 years to travel around Russia in fits and starts due to visa issues and weather conditions that only allowed travel for a few months a year. When Russia denied him a visa in 2012, Bushby marched in protest from Los Angeles to the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., which ultimately allowed him to obtain the proper documents.

Family firsts and long-awaited reunions

Bushby met several times over the decades with family members who met him on his journey. He was greeted on Dover beach by his father and brothers after crossing the Channel last month.

He was 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 incredible.

Bushby hadn’t seen his mother in a decade, setting the stage for an emotional and somewhat awkward reunion, captured amid a crowd of cameras and a documentary film crew.

“Hold on, mother,” he joked, as his mother wrapped her arms around him and cried. “Get together.”

He said he had long tried to imagine that moment when he would return to find his mother at the door where he had left her so long ago. He said it was an emotional reunion that was “a big, big fuzzy mess” that he was trying to process.

“It was almost shocking to see my mother again after so long,” he later told a news conference. “She’s changed a lot. We’ve all changed a lot in that time.”

Next steps for a man who walked millions

During the final days of his trip, Bushby spoke of his anxiety over the trip’s end, not knowing what he would do next and coming to terms with having to live in his mother’s basement.

“It’s like crossing the event horizon into a black hole,” he told the Associated Press. “I have no idea what’s going to happen in my life.”

There will be plenty to keep him busy. Six speeches are planned over the next two months, a sequel to his memoir “Giant Steps” is expected and German filmmaker Werner Herzog is producing a documentary on his journey.

He expects to deal with the ups and downs that other adventurers have experienced after long journeys.

“The only way, you know, to get through this is to find another mission, another passion and keep yourself busy,” he said. “That’s what I intend to do.”

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Melley reported from London.