Have you ever felt the frustration of a delayed flight or a long queue at a border? Now, imagine that delay lasting for ten years. For one unbelievably stubborn man from England, this bureaucratic nightmare was just another obstacle in the longest walk in human history.
He battled venomous snakes, faced down armed smugglers, and crossed a frozen ocean on foot. But his greatest foe wasn’t a mountain or a desert, it was a simple visa stamp, a piece of paper that held his world-spanning dream hostage for a solid decade.
A Promise Forged in Fire
In 1998, Karl Bushby, a former British paratrooper, stood at the southernmost tip of South America in Punta Arenas, Chile. He made a promise to himself that was as simple as it was insane: he would walk home. Not to the nearest town, but all the way back to his front door in Hull, England.
The rules he set were absolute. He would not use any form of transport, creating an unbroken chain of footsteps that would stretch across continents. He called it the Goliath Expedition, and for the next 27 years (as of 2025), this audacious goal would define his entire existence.
Wrestling the Wild Earth
Bushby’s path forced him through some of the most dangerous places on the planet. He began by trekking north, confronting the infamous Darien Gap, a lawless 160-kilometre stretch of dense jungle and swamp separating Colombia and Panama. With no roads and a terrifying reputation for armed rebels and drug traffickers, he pushed through what many consider an impassable wilderness.
After conquering the Americas, he faced an even more formidable challenge: the Bering Strait. In a display of pure grit, he became one of the few people in history to walk from Alaska into Russia across the frozen sea, a perilous trek over shifting ice in blistering cold.
The Great Wall of Bureaucracy
After surviving the planet’s deadliest obstacles, Karl Bushby’s colossal walk slammed into a wall. It wasn’t made of rock or ice, but of red tape. Upon entering Russia in 2006, his progress, which had relied on grit and muscle, became a prisoner of politics. Russian authorities, suspicious of his intentions, constantly hampered his movement. He faced repeated detentions and visa restrictions that limited his time in the country.
The situation reached a breaking point when officials banned him from Russia for five years for a visa violation. His epic advance was stopped dead. For more than a decade, his life became a draining cycle of lobbying, waiting, and hoping. The man who could conquer jungles was defeated, temporarily, by paperwork.
A Different Kind of Endurance
Many people imagine Bushby has been completely cut off from the world for decades, a lone figure constantly walking. The reality, as revealed by those who follow his progress, is a different kind of amazing. Because of strict visa limits, like Russia’s 90-day tourist rule, he often has to walk for a few months, then leave the country entirely. He then flies back to the exact GPS coordinate where he stopped and resumes his walk.
This stop-start approach, managed over decades, requires an incredible level of logistical planning and mental fortitude. Furthermore, he doesn’t fund this enormous undertaking alone. He relies on sponsors to pay for his food, gear, and the flights needed to navigate visa resets. At one point, funds dried up, forcing him to halt his progress until new sponsors stepped in, adding yet another layer of difficulty to his unbelievable mission. As he nears the finish line, with a projected arrival in Hull in 2026, his story is about more than just walking. It’s a showcase of one man’s refusal to quit, whether facing a frozen ocean or a government official saying “no.”
