56-year-old Karl Bushby, from Kingston upon Hull, is aiming to become the first person to complete a continuous round-the-world walk – but now he’s issued a major update
An explorer who has spent almost three decades walking across the world is heading home to Hull, 28 years after he set off on his mega mission.
Former paratrooper Karl Bushby is set out to become the first person to walk an unbroken path around the globe and thought it would take him 12 years when he embarked on the incredible challenge in October 1998. Now, having faced a jungle swarming with crocodiles and anacondas and 57 days in a Russian prison, he is finally returning.
During his 36,000-mile trek, he says he has also been robbed, detained, deported, bitten, starved and very nearly drowned on the journey that began because of a wild bet in a bar. He set out with a self-styled trolley to pull and push and now the 56-year-old has decided he’s heading back.
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He took to YouTube to tell then world the new and returned to the video-sharing platform to answer the people who have questioned why, after his amazing world travels on foot, he would want to head back to Hull – he expects to make it back to the city by September.
“I can still remember leaving my mum’s house in Hull in October 1998. It’s going to be very emotional walking back along that road,” he said. “Hull certainly seems like a very different place to the one I left and people want to know, why I’m going back to Hull, as if, you know, it’s a place you would never go to for some reason.
“But A, it’s my home town; B, it’s where I left from. When you think about how this journey began … it officially began on the southern tip of South America, yes, but we actually spent, I don’t know, two weeks maybe walking down south from the UK. I kind of, like, left home; the BBC were there and they filmed it.
“So you have me saying goodbye to family – most of whom [are] dead now, the people that were actually there wishing me goodbye – and walking off down my street, where I will return one day. Obviously, you have got to get that video of you coming back down that street, right?
“And back to my mother’s house from where it all began. Because we walked for basically those first two weeks to test the machine that I was pushing because we had just put it together. We got some engineering workshop to build the Beast One.
“So, that first few weeks down to the south … I go down there and I say goodbye to a girlfriend that I had in Kent; say goodbye to the guys still in the Army, then I head on a train to Brize Norton with my father and brother. So yeah, we’ve got to take it back to Hull. We’ve got to take it back and walk back down that street to where it all began.”
As part of his aptly named Goliath Expedition, Karl has swum across the Caspian Sea and walked the American and Asian continents. He has named two of the scariest places he visited on his travels on his continuous round-the-world walk, which started his mammoth journey in Chile.
His first occurred when traversing the infamous Darién Gap, bridging Central and South America, and he found himself in the “middle of a war zone”, reports Unilad. Karl told CBS News: “And then there’s a whole layer above that of cartels and drug plantations, and then really, really tough jungle.”
Spanning Panama and Colombia, and known as one of the most treacherous migration routes on the planet, the Darién Gap is a notorious 60-mile passage characterised by difficult terrain, including mountains and rainforests.
Its dangers include hot temperatures, heavy rainfall, rivers that people have to cross, mosquitoes, crocodiles, venomous snakes, and criminals, with human trafficking, extortion, robbery, rape and sexual assault reportedly commonplace.
Karl also highlighted a journey he took across the Bering Strait, which lies between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, where he had an encounter with a polar bear. He added: “You’re in a very serious world that will kill you in 20 minutes if you mess up.”
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