After a 28-year odyssey spanning 29 countries, 36,000 miles, facing down polar bears, kidnappers and a spell in Russian custody, Karl Bushby was finally back in the arms of his longsuffering mother, Angela.
“Where have I been?” he joked as Angela sobbed into his chest with a mix of relief, pride and no doubt the odd sleepless night.
Surrounded by television cameras and with a Sky News helicopter overhead, the 57-year-old was given a hero’s welcome as he completed his record-breaking voyage on foot from Punta Arenas in Chile, the southernmost city on the South American continent, to his home town of Hull on Monday.
I expect it will be a while before someone beats his record.
I always wonder how such extreme travelers fund their travels. Do they keep up a journal they can profit from, online or in a newspaper, do they sometimes do a few weeks of work during their journeys?
This guy had sponsors- them dropping out was part of the reason it took way longer than initially planned- but, well, he was walking and also being just given food and shelter by random people. Some bits needed specialist kit, like the Bering Strait section, but a lot of it would have been pretty cheap. There was a more detailed interview with him a couple of weeks back (linked in the article above) which mentioned he published a book part way through, and used that to carry on.
A old friend of mine actually spent over a year cycling round South America and went a pretty ridiculous distance -São Paulo in Brazil to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego being the longest continuous section- before Covid hit and he decided to come back rather than risk getting stuck for an indeterminate time. He just funded it himself, though he also said he got offered a load of free hospitality in more remote areas where tourists were not common, but he didn’t try and get publicity at all, beyond a blog that was mostly just read by friends.
There are more crazy people out there doing this stuff than you maybe think.
Agree. I followed a guy I met on a brief (for me) bike trip along the CA coast. He was doing Yukon to Ushuaia when I met him. He had also done London to Singapore or something like that, and was planning something the length of Africa - Cairo to Cape Town on a bike.
In his blog is is always worried about budget and economizes well, taking advantage of free camping (“wild camping”) opportunities, and charity offered by welcoming strangers, occasionally taking cheap indoor accommodations, and eating cheaply. Heinz Stucke, linked above, earned money selling postcards from his travels, and relied on charity. A lot of people just save-up a bundle and go until the money runs out, and others earn as they go. These are multi-year endeavors - some people journal their bike travel on crazyguyonabike dot com if you are interested. Definitely a different mind-set than us sitting at our keyboards right now.
There are more people than you might think doing these things.
In the early 2000’s I lived in a remote north western village in Alaska, just 50 miles south of the Bering Straits. One fall Round the World Rosie passed through our village on her say southeast and a few weeks later Karl passed through on his way northwest. I didn’t talk to Rosie, but our frineds helped here get her cart fixed up and gave her supplies.
Karl ended up stuck in our village for most of a week waiting for the weather to clear. I talked with him quite a bit. I remember asking about visa’s and paperwork for entering Russia. He replied that he had been working on that for a long time without much luck. He was going with no entry paperwork and expected to end up in jail in Russia. That is exactly what happened. He was released after a short stay, but forced to leave the country. I think that it took a few years to get access sorted out after that.
Yeah, warmshowers has strayed a bit from it’s original intent - now with an annual fee, reports of unreliability in getting responses from hosts, and freeloaders just looking for a place to stay as a guest without ever intending to host. I think there are other platforms for walkers to find places to stay indoors at no cost, and without the expectation that they would host someone, someday. Maybe Karl used something like that, or, ya know, just sorta “winged-it” most of the time (something I bet many people are uncomfortable with).
He walked on the ice across the Bering Strait, swam across the Caspian Sea (to avoid walking through Russia or Iran), and swam across the English Channel.
I read he sought special permission to walk the Chunnel, but was denied so he swam. He hiked the Darien Gap and got special equipment to cross the Bering Straight in the winter (and was immediately arrested in Russia when the guards didn’t believe that had come across the strait).