He left his home at 29 and walked 36,000 miles around the world: Here is the most important life lesson he learned

When most people chase speed, Karl Bushby chose distance. With 500 dollars, a backpack and a rule that allowed no shortcuts, the former British soldier stepped onto a road that would stretch across continents and decades. Nearly 30 years later, as he edges closer to home, the most valuable insight from his extraordinary journey has little to do with survival and everything to do with human connection.

One man, one rule, one impossible line

Bushby’s mission, known as the Goliath Expedition, was disarmingly simple on paper. He would walk all the way back to Hull, England, without using any form of transport. No cars, no planes, no boats. Only walking and swimming.

“The objective was simply to get home unassisted by any form of transport,” Bushby told CNBC Make It. The complications emerged later, as borders, visas and global politics repeatedly tested that promise.

Boredom, maps and a life-changing scribble

Adventure had always shaped Bushby’s life. Raised in a military household, he joined the British army at 16 and spent 12 years in the Parachute Regiment. But during a period of relative global calm, routine began to feel stifling.

“At some point, I started drawing lines on maps and daydreaming about great distances,” he recalled to CNBC Make It. One line, stretching from the United Kingdom through Europe, Asia, the Americas and back again, refused to let go of his imagination.

Once that route existed, turning back no longer felt possible.

In 1998, Bushby left the army and flew to Punta Arenas, Chile, where his walk officially began. That first step carried emotional finality. “That first day you step onto the road is a memorable one,” he said. With little money, no support network and a route nearly 36,000 miles long, he had committed to uncertainty in its purest form.

Each day brought roughly 30 kilometres of walking, often without knowing where food, shelter or safety would come from.

Prisons, polar cold and open water

The journey quickly proved unforgiving. Bushby crossed the Darien Gap, endured jail in Panama, and faced detention by Russian authorities after attempting to cross the frozen Bering Strait. He was banned from Russia for five years before being allowed to resume his trek.

He nearly froze to death in Alaska and swam across the Caspian Sea over 31 days to preserve the continuity of his route. Speaking to CNBC Make It, he described how hunger reshaped his thinking. “When you have no idea where your next meal will come from, you just become obsessed with finding things to eat,” he said.

When the world hit pause

What was meant to be a 12-year expedition stretched into decades. Financial crises, visa restrictions, wars and the Covid-19 pandemic repeatedly stalled his progress. According to earlier interviews with BBC Radio Humberside, Bushby refused to compromise on his rules, returning each time to the exact point where he had stopped.

By 2024, he entered Europe through Türkiye, praising the warmth of the people he met along the way, as reported by Daily Sabah. Fewer than 2,000 miles now separate him from home, with a planned arrival in Hull by September 2026.

The hardest part was not the walking

Despite the physical extremes, Bushby says the most difficult aspect of the journey was emotional. “Losing the women that you fall in love with,” he told CNBC Make It, was far harder than pain or exhaustion.

Paradoxically, those same relationships brought his greatest happiness. The contrast reshaped his understanding of fulfilment, teaching him that endurance alone does not define a meaningful life. Across continents and cultures, Bushby repeatedly encountered kindness. Strangers fed him, treated his injuries and offered shelter without asking for anything in return.

“You don’t even speak the same language,” he said. “It’s just smiles and nods.” After thousands of such encounters, Bushby believes the world is far kinder than headlines suggest.