Karl Bushby’s plan to walk across the globe began with a note in a birthday card.
It was the mid-1990s and Mr. Bushby was a paratrooper in the British Army, obsessed with endurance tests. He was trying to find the longest distance he could travel by foot, but none of his options felt challenging enough, maxing out at a few thousand miles. Then his father suggested in the card that he look into traversing the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia when it froze in the winter — unlocking a path across four continents.
Never mind that crossing the perilous waterway on foot had little modern precedent. Mr. Bushby took a black marker, walked to a map on his wall and drew a line from England, where he lived, through Europe and Asia, across the strait into North America and down to the southernmost tip of South America.
“That was when I realized that that’s the kind of thing I’ve been looking for,” he recalled in an interview. “Now we had the ultimate journey.”
Mr. Bushby flew to South America and started walking home. Nearly 28 years later, he’s almost done.
Earlier this month, he swam across the English Channel, arriving in his home country after spending half his life away. His trek began in southern Patagonia, Chile, in November 1998, when he was 29, and he plans to reach his mother’s house in Hull, England, sometime next week. He will be 57.
The journey, he said, has taken him through some of the world’s harshest landscapes, from the jungle of the Darién Gap to the tundra of Siberia. He has been arrested, deported, broke, lost, and written off more times than he can count.
His expedition has also been interrupted — by wars, economic collapse and a pandemic. When forced to stop, he would typically decamp to Mexico until he could figure out a way to continue from wherever he left off.
Through it all, Mr. Bushby has been guided by wanderlust and two self-imposed rules: He would not use modes of transport to travel, and he would not set foot in Britain again until the end of his journey, even though this made seeing his son more difficult.
Earlier this month, at a pub in south London, Mr. Bushby was sipping coffee in athleisure and scuffed running shoes, reminiscing ahead of the final stretch of his quest.
“It feels like it’s one miracle after another,” he said of his journey. Over the last three decades, adventure came at him “like a tsunami,” he added, “and it really gives a good shellacking.”
The Boy and the Beast
Mr. Bushby began his trek in Punta Arenas, in southern Chile. He had around $500 and what he called “The Beast,” a modified golf trolley holding camping supplies, clothing, toiletries, food and water.
On an average day, he would try to walk 18 miles before looking for a place to set up camp.
The first few hundred miles were rough, he said. The weather could be harsh and he mostly lived off gas station food. “We had no support,” he added.
(Mr. Bushby often uses “we,” meaning himself and the trolley. “It would become my version of Wilson,” he said, referring to the volleyball companion of Tom Hanks’s character in the movie “Cast Away.”)
As word of his journey spread, people began to drive by to give him food and money.
Throughout the walk, Mr. Bushby would also take breaks, pausing for weeks or months to recover and escape road life, which he said was “absolutely, insanely tedious.”
“The first years, you’re living the boys’ adventure dream, and it’s great,” he said, “and then it really becomes a grind.”
Mr. Bushby felt a shift in 2002, when he crossed into the United States. He arrived in Nogales, Ariz., he said, and went from being a roadside curiosity to a nuisance, or a threat.
He was often thought to be homeless, he said, “and it was not long after 9/11 at that point, so everyone was very touchy.”
He was frequently stopped by the police, who kept him off highways, made him move his tent or shooed him away from public places.
The United States is also where he picked up sponsorships, including from a web hosting company and a shoe insole brand, which generated a few hundred dollars a month.
In 2003, he reached Canada, where he had an epiphany. For years he had pulled his trolley, until one day — by chance — he shoved it from behind.
“I accidentally pushed it and realized, actually, this could be easier,” he said. “From there on, I pushed it.”
Over Ice and Into Russian Custody
While he faced many challenges, perhaps none was as grueling as the Bering Strait.
In March 2006, Mr. Bushby and Dimitri Kieffer, a French American adventurer, began to make their way to Russia from Alaska across the waterway’s shifting expanse of ice.
For two weeks, the two looked for the biggest piece of ice each night to make camp.
“All night long, you’re just listening to the grinding, and the ice is just like screaming,” Mr. Bushby said. Once, he added, “we actually had to evacuate the tent during the night because the thing started to break apart beneath us.”
The pair got lucky. The weather cooperated in their final days and they were able to reach Russia. But when they got there, the border guards who met them were not impressed.
“They just weren’t buying the fact that we just walked across the Bering Strait,” Mr. Bushby said.
The men were detained for failing to register with the Russian authorities and held for nearly two months.
What He Left Behind
Mr. Bushby’s decision to stay away from Britain made it difficult for him to see his family, including his son, Adam, who was 8 when the journey began.
Mr. Bushby, who had separated from his son’s mother years before he started walking, said he had wrestled with how to square his trip with fatherhood, thinking perhaps the journey would inspire his son or make him proud.
“Maybe that’s going to have some value as his father,” he recalled thinking when he left.
In an interview, the younger Mr. Bushby, now 36, said that when he was a child, he did not understand what his father was doing or why he was away. But a turning point came in 2004, when, at 14 years old, he met his father in Alaska for the first time since the trek began.
“At that point, I just sort of accepted, ‘Look, this is what you’re doing,’” the younger Mr. Bushby said. “‘I will respect it and I will cheer you on the whole way.’”
He said he was looking forward to welcoming his father home and introducing him to Harley, a 12-year-old granddaughter he has yet to meet.
“I am very proud of what he’s done,” he added. “He is a role model for people who say, ‘Oh, I can’t do that.’ And then you’ve got my dad going, ‘No, you can. You just need to push for it.’”
An Approaching End
The morning after Mr. Bushby swam across the English Channel, he said he woke up with a tremendous sense of loss.
He said he had never really considered what the end of his trip would look like — it was always too distant. But now, with only a few hundred miles left, Mr. Bushby said it felt “troubling.”
“I’m about to lose my purpose for living,” he said. “It’s about to abruptly end.”
Mr. Bushby doesn’t know what he might do next, but said he is interested in becoming a science educator. He’d also like to share the thing that surprised him the most on his journey: the kindness of strangers.
Hundreds of people offered him shelter, food, assistance or just a hug. He said that he found a welcoming spirit in “every culture, every country.”
He has already started spreading that message among young people as a public speaker on his way.
“I get the great pleasure of being able to stand in front of school kids now,” he said, “and telling them that the world is just a much better place than you will imagine.”
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