28 years ago, Karl Bushby left England to become the first person to circumnavigate the world on foot and now he’s on the final leg of his journey

Cass and I are out here in London with Phans of Philly for Eagles-Jaguars at Tottenham on Sunday, and my algorithm has gone full British on me.

We already covered the Japanese guy who swore he survived on 30 minutes of sleep a night for 17 years before passing out on his own livestream. Now my feed has served up Karl Bushby, an Englishman who just spent 28 YEARS walking around the planet.

I know what you’re thinking because I thought it too. 28 years? There’s no way that takes 28 years unless this dude was screwing around for most of it. Walking the world feels like a two or three year project, tops. I figured he stopped somewhere in Asia, married a local, raised a whole family, and remembered the walk sometime around 2019.

Not even close. This might be the most stubborn human being on Earth, and I mean that as the highest compliment I can give.

Karl Bushby is now the first person to circumnavigate the world on foot

28 yıl önce dünyayı yürüyerek dolaşan ilk kişi olmak için İngiltere'den yola çıkan Karl Bushby, yolculuğunun son etabı için ülkesine döndü.

— Hull şehrindeki annesinin evine yürüyerek yolculuğunu tamamlayacak. pic.twitter.com/XBlLjjsQnT

— BPT (@bpthaber) October 7, 2026

The Rules That Ruined His Life:

Karl Bushby left England in 1998 at 29 years old with the goal of becoming the first person to circle the globe on foot and walk back home. He gave himself two rules. No vehicles to move him forward, ever, and no going home until the job was done.

He figured the whole thing would take about 12 years. Not quite. Now we know that Karl Bushby was literally off by 16 years. He walked the length of South America, pushed through the Darién Gap, which is basically a jungle that exists to kill people, and worked his way up through North America to Alaska.

In 2006 he walked across the frozen Bering Strait into Russia, and the Russians welcomed him by arresting him for illegally crossing the border. At one point they banned him from coming back into the country entirely.

From there it turned into a nightmare of visa problems and running out of money, and then the world piled on. COVID shut everything down, and then the war between Russia and Ukraine blew up whatever route was left.

Eventually he hit a wall he couldn’t walk past, the Caspian Sea.

A normal person goes around it. Karl Bushby is not a normal person. In 2024 he swam roughly 288 kilometers from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, and it took him 31 days. Thirty one days in the water because a boat would’ve broken a rule he made up in 1998.

From there he went through Georgia into Turkey, crossed Istanbul, and pushed into Europe until he reached France and ran into the English Channel. Karl Bushby asked if he could walk through the Channel Tunnel and got told no.

A ferry would’ve broken the rule, so he swam that too. Of course he did.

On October 5, 28 years after he left, he set foot back on English soil. He’s got about 400 kilometers left, and the whole thing officially ends when he walks up to his mom’s house in Hull. Over 50,000 kilometers, dozens of countries, a frozen strait and two bodies of water he swam because he refused to cheat.

Karl Bushby left at 29 and he’s coming home at 57.

I came in ready to roast this guy and I’m leaving a fan. When he started, there was no iPhone, the Eagles hadn’t drafted Donovan McNabb yet, and the Phillies were a year away from even thinking about contending.

Borders moved, wars broke out, a pandemic shut down the planet, and every plan he had got blown up a dozen times over. He never changed the destination. He just kept finding another way to get there, even when that way was swimming for a month straight.

That’s the kind of stubborn I respect. Most people bail the second the plan stops working. This guy swam the Caspian.

Karl Bushby is about 400 kilometers from finishing the most ridiculous and most impressive walk in human history, and somebody needs to be standing outside his mom’s house in Hull with a cold pint when he gets there.

As for me, I’ll be walking about a mile to Tottenham on Sunday to watch the Birds handle Jacksonville, and I’m going to complain about my feet the entire time.

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