Photo courtesy Karl Bushby
Synopsis: In 1998, a simple bar bet sent one man on an impossible mission: walk from Chile to England without ever boarding a plane or car. Karl Bushby has been walking for 27 years, covering 31,000 miles across four continents. He’s crossed frozen seas on foot, navigated jungle deadlands, and even swam 288 kilometers when borders slammed shut. Two rules guide him: no motors, no shortcuts. With 932 miles left, his September 2026 arrival proves that persistence rewrites possibility itself.
Some promises are whispered. Others are roared into existence over drinks and bravado. This one happened in a Chilean pub in 1998, when a restless spirit decided that the distance between continents was just an invitation.
The mission sounded absurd: walk from the world’s southern edge all the way home. Not drive. Not fly. Walk. Every single mile on foot, through mountains and deserts, across borders that didn’t want crossing. Twelve years seemed reasonable for such madness.
But the path doesn’t measure itself in calendars. It measures itself in transformation. What begins as a bet becomes a meditation. What starts as adventure becomes pilgrimage. And twenty-seven years later, the walking continues—not because the destination changed, but because the journey revealed something deeper than arrival ever could.
Table of Contents
Two Rules, Zero Exceptions
Photo courtesy Karl Bushby
The commitment was simple but absolute. No motorized transport to move forward. No flying home until the feet touch English soil. These weren’t suggestions—they were the sacred contract that gave the whole endeavor meaning.
Every inch had to be earned through motion. When roads ended, the walking continued. When exhaustion begged for mercy, the feet moved anyway. The rules created a container for something rare: pure, uncompromising intention.
And here’s what makes it beautiful—there’s no room for negotiation with yourself when the promise is that clear. You either walk, or you break the vow. For nearly three decades, those rules have held firm. Through frozen wastelands and tropical heat, through bureaucratic nightmares and physical collapse, the feet kept moving. The promise kept breathing.
The Bering Strait on Shifting Ice
Photo courtesy Karl Bushby
Most people see the gap between continents as the end of possibility. The sea between Alaska and Russia freezes solid in winter, creating a temporary bridge of ice that shifts and cracks with every tide and wind.
This crossing became one of the most dangerous stretches. The ice doesn’t care about your timeline or your courage. It splits beneath your weight, sending you into water cold enough to stop your heart in minutes. Every step is a gamble with physics and fate.
Challenges faced:
- Temperature dropping to -50°C
- Ice shifting unpredictably beneath each step
- No rescue available if something goes wrong
- Visibility reduced to nearly zero in blizzards
But the crossing happened. Slowly, carefully, with a companion equally committed to madness. Two humans defying geography, walking between worlds on a surface that shouldn’t hold them. And it did. Barely.
The Darién Gap's Dark Heart
Then came the jungle that swallows travelers whole. The Darién Gap sits between Panama and Colombia—a lawless stretch of rainforest where maps give up and governments look away.
There are no roads here. Just mud that grabs your boots, rivers thick with snakes, and groups who don’t take kindly to strangers. People disappear in this green darkness. Some from exhaustion. Others from things you don’t talk about in polite company.
The passage took weeks of hacking through vegetation, sleeping in hammocks strung between trees, negotiating with armed strangers who controlled invisible territories. Every day presented new choices between danger and more danger. But stopping wasn’t an option. The only way home was through, so through is where the feet went.
When Russia Said No
After years of walking through Russian territory, the permission suddenly evaporated. A five-year ban. No appeal, no explanation that mattered. The journey stopped cold at a border that wouldn’t budge.
Lesser commitments would’ve crumbled here. The reasonable response would be to accept defeat, maybe try a different route, or just go home and call it close enough. But reason had nothing to do with this anymore.
Instead, a 3,000-mile walk to the Russian Embassy in Washington DC. Not to beg. Not to plead. Just to show up, in person, on foot, and make the case. The sheer audacity of walking across a continent to ask for permission to walk across another continent—it worked. The ban lifted. The journey resumed. Sometimes persistence speaks louder than any argument.
Swimming the Caspian Sea
Photo courtesy Karl Bushby
By 2024, borders had become the new enemy. Bureaucracy and geopolitics created walls that feet alone couldn’t cross. The Caspian Sea stretched 288 kilometers of water between where he was and where he needed to be.
He wasn’t a swimmer. Didn’t matter. The rules said no motors, but they didn’t say anything about arms instead of legs. For 31 days, he swam. Not in a straight line—currents don’t allow that luxury. But forward. Always forward.
The swim by numbers:
- 288 kilometers total distance
- 31 consecutive days in the water
- No professional swimming background
- Support boat accompanying for safety
- Battling exhaustion, cold, and doubt daily
The body becomes a different kind of vehicle when the spirit refuses to stop. Muscles learn new languages. Endurance finds reserves that shouldn’t exist. And somehow, impossibly, the far shore appears.
31,000 Miles
Photo courtesy Karl Bushby
Try to comprehend that distance. It’s roughly 1.25 times around the Earth’s equator. It’s like walking from New York to Los Angeles and back five times. Numbers like that don’t fit comfortably in the mind.
But it’s never been about the distance. Each mile is just a container for something else—the sunrise over unfamiliar mountains, the stranger who shares bread, the night you sleep under stars in a country whose name you can barely pronounce.
The feet develop calluses thick as leather. The knees complain in languages only pain understands. The back carries not just a pack but the accumulated weight of every choice to keep going when stopping would be easier. And yet the body adapts. It always does, when the spirit insists.
Four Continents, 25 Countries
The route carved through geography like a thread stitching together pieces of a vast quilt. South America gave way to Central America. North America stretched endlessly upward. Asia sprawled with bureaucratic complexity. Europe beckoned with proximity to home.
Each country brought new alphabets, new currencies, new ways of saying “hello” and “thank you” and “please don’t shoot.” Border guards became recurring characters in an ongoing drama. Visa applications turned into full-time work.
The continental journey:
- Started: Southern Chile, South America
- Crossed: The Americas from south to north
- Bridged: Bering Strait into Asia
- Swimming: Caspian Sea when land routes closed
- Current location: Hungary, Europe
- Final destination: Hull, England
But here’s the thing about crossing that many borders—you stop seeing them as barriers and start seeing them as proof that humans invented these lines. The earth doesn’t recognize them. Neither do feet that refuse to stop moving.
The World Wraps Itself Around You
There’s a lesson earned through 27 years of relentless forward motion. Not taught. Not read in books. Earned through blisters and frostbite and moments when the body begged to surrender.
“The world will wrap itself around you if you keep going.” Not because the world is kind—it often isn’t. But because momentum creates its own gravity. Keep moving and solutions appear. Keep walking and strangers become allies. Keep pressing forward and borders that seemed absolute find ways to open.
It’s not magic. It’s not luck. It’s the simple physics of persistence. The universe responds to commitment the way water responds to a stone—eventually, it yields. Not out of mercy, but because constancy wears down resistance. Every time.
932 Miles from Home
Hungary marks the final stretch. After nearly three decades of walking, the destination isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s visible on maps. It’s countable in days rather than years.
932 miles. That’s a distance that once would’ve seemed impossible. Now it feels like a gentle exhale after holding your breath for a lifetime. The body knows these roads. The feet recognize European soil. Home isn’t a dream anymore—it’s a coordinate.
September 2026. That’s when the feet are expected to touch Hull’s streets. Twenty-seven years will collapse into arrival. The journey that began with a bar bet will end with a door opening. And everything in between—the ice, the jungle, the swim, the borders, the impossible miles—will become the story that proves ordinary humans can do extraordinary things.
One Foot, Then Another
Age changes the equation but not the commitment. He started at 29, restless and strong. He’ll finish at 56, weathered and wiser. The body that began this journey doesn’t exist anymore—every cell has replaced itself multiple times over these decades.
But the promise remains. The feet still move. One in front of the other, just like they did on day one in Chile. There’s no secret technique. No hidden formula. Just the stubborn refusal to stop before the job is done.
And that’s the real lesson here. Not that you should walk around the world—most of us won’t and don’t need to. But that whatever impossible thing calls to you, whatever bet you make with yourself, whatever promise you whisper in moments of courage—it’s doable. Not easy. Not quick. But absolutely, undeniably doable. The world wraps itself around those who refuse to quit. Every single time.
FAQs
A bar bet in Chile, 1998. What seemed like twelve years of adventure became a lifetime commitment to walking home without motors or flights.
Through sponsorships, donations, odd jobs along the way, and the kindness of strangers who believed in the mission enough to help.
The borders. Geography you can navigate, but bureaucracy and political bans have caused the longest delays and most creative solutions.
Not to move forward. The rules are absolute—no motorized transport in the direction of home until he arrives on foot in Hull.
The journey ends. The promise is fulfilled. And a story 27 years in the making proves that impossible is just a word for “not yet done.”
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