"He Refused to Quit:" Fundraiser for Man on 27-Year Walk Around the Wolds Comes to Banff
Leah Pellletier
Rocky Mountain Outlook
BANFF – Climbing, swimming and crawling his way through a soup of frozen slush, frostbite is at hand, help is hours away and the horizon is nothing but ice-clogged sea in Karly Bushby's eyes.
At this point, in 2006, the British adventurer is eight years into his Goliath Expedition, a mission to walk around the entire world, but here, in the frigid grip of the Bering Strait – one of three “gaps” to cross during the trek — the journey seems to hang by a thread.
“The ice in there never settles. It's always broken. It's always a mass crush freight train of moving ice that's going in all directions driven by strong currents and winds,” says Bushby of the 80-plus kilometer choke point that connects Alaska to Russia’s easternmost point.”
“It’s a constant struggle.”
Leaving the cobblestone streets of his home in Hull, England behind on Nov. 1, 1998, at age 29, the expedition has always had two rules: no mode of transportation other than Bushby’s own two feet can be used and he can't return home until the worldwide trek is complete.
"I left my mother's house, walked down through the United Kingdom to test some equipment I was pulling at the time, said goodbye to my friends still in the army down south and then got on a plane," said Bushby recalling the first couple days of the journey.
What he initially estimated would take about 10-12 years to complete, has now stretched into year 27 as Bushby prepares for the last leg of the expedition and an expected return home in October 2026.
Back on the ice, the battle to cross the Bering Strait alongside French adventurer Dimitri Kieffer, in an attempt to continue his trek through Russia, wasn’t even the crux of Bushby's adventure to date.
Starting at the southernmost point of South America in the late 90s, Bushby would encounter one of his biggest challenges crossing the Darién Gap, a treacherous stretch of jungle on the Colombia-Panama border.
“You're in a war zone. The guerillas own that jungle and you’re basically avoiding anything and everybody, sneaking through what is the frontline of a civil war basically at that point,” said Bushby.
Dodging guerillas and drug lords through dense brush and swampy terrain, Bushby used the river as camouflage, even floating down it for four days at one point.
“It would take me 10 days to go the distance it would take me one day on the road to get through that jungle,” he said.
He recalls a confrontation with a caiman, a reptile in the alligator family, while floating a murky river in the Darién Gap.
“It's pretty uncomfortable when you're faced with a two-metre-long crocodile in the water at nose level, it’s not always ideal, but you leave them alone, they leave you alone kind of thing,” he said of the encounter.
Coming out of the jungle unscathed, Bushby walked through Mexico and onto the USA in the early 2000s. By 2004, he crossed into Canada where his route would take him up through Alberta via the Trans-Canada Highway before a gruelling battle against winter and the harsh conditions of Alaska.
Bushby’s ‘why?’
Bushby is always getting asked the same question: why?
Behind the unrivaled challenge, the answer comes in many layers for the Brit.
“You can go back to all kinds of threads in my life and see parts of the bricks that built this house,” he says. “The short answer basically is it's just an enormous challenge. It kind of really got traction while I was in the army.”
Spending his early years as a British paratrooper, lines across maps started to lure Bushby. Ideas and routes swirled and were tossed up with other members in Bushby's battalion.
“One day my father had sent me a birthday card and in there was a note about how a couple of special forces guys had talked about being able to walk from London to New York … That's when we really started those lines and those maps kind of grew into something stupendous, incorporated the whole world not knowing why anyone would want to stop in New York,” Bushby described. “That big line encompassing all those continents was the point of no return.”
With his gear cart, he calls "the beast," in tow, Bushby’s life, for almost three decades, has been filled with a series of roads, horizons, tent dwelling and keeping in touch with family through phone calls.
Through it all, his determination has never taken a day off, even after the journey came to its biggest halt during his attempt to traverse Russia.
Making history as the first to cross the Bering Strait after 15 days and 145kms, Kieffer and Bushby’s feat spread through headlines worldwide, but Russia was not so eager to celebrate the adventurer's entry into the history books.
“We ended up being basically picked up and detained and put through a system where they were pretty much convinced at one point we were spies, which became an international political problem,” recalled Bushby.
Housed in a guard base before being dropped off, without passports, in a desolate Siberian town and told to “stay put” it would be 57 days before the pair was free.
“We were put on trial and found guilty but given the option for a retrial and from the retrial the politics had kind of taken care of it by that point. In other words, we got really lucky, and you certainly couldn't get away with that today,” he said, recalling the narrow escape.
A ban from Russia, plenty of bureaucracy, denied visas and deportations later, 11 years passed before Bushby would be allowed back into the country where he “inched” his way across, continuing his walk into Kazakhstan and central Asia.
Having to lay low in Mexico in between “stages” of the journey over the years, on his stretch through central Asia in 2024, Bushby would mark yet another first.
With ongoing conflict in Iran and a rough past with Russia, Bushby’s only path forward was a 288km swim across the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan.
“We got lucky and managed to secure the support of the Azerbaijani government to help us do that which made it all possible,” said Bushby who completed the swim with a team in 31 days — the first people to add the accomplishment to their names.
The Home Stretch
Twenty-five countries and 50,000km behind him, 1,500 km is now all that remains between Bushby and home, where his mother awaits in the same house he first left on England’s east coast.
While returning home has been the point of the journey for 27 years, Bushby describes it as an "uncomfortable feeling.”
“I think like anyone after a lifelong career, retirement day is a little unnerving. I’m going to be forced to grow up and get a job now,” he said.
But before the Goliath Expedition comes to an end, after a series of fundraisers in Alberta, Bushby will board a flight back to Europe and pick up where he left off in Austria, making his way into Germany and Belgium before a “short hop” to the coast of France.
“Then, the only real challenge between now and the UK is getting permission to walk the Channel Tunnel or Eurotunnel using the maintenance shaft,” says Bushby.
If the adventurer can’t get permission to cross the English Channel via the shaft, then another 34km swim will be in order.
From there, it's a jaunt through the English countryside back up the road he started the journey on 27 years ago.
Worldwide Support, Banff Fundraiser
When Bushby first left home, bound for Chile, he had $500 in his pocket.
Gaining and losing sponsors throughout the years, particularly in 2008 following the global financial crisis, Bushby says the world has become his support system.
“I owe a lot because (strangers) have nursed me back to health when I've been sick, fed me, watered me, sheltered me. That's just been a constant theme of this entire 27 years, which is pretty great,” he said.
In every country and culture, he’s seen this similar thread.
“It has been a real eyeopener. With me originally coming from a military background and a 12-year career in the military, you don't always get to see the best of humanity,” says Bushby. “It's just been incredible the kind of people that you meet on the road.
“A lot of us spend too much time in front of the 24-hour news cycle where the world looks like it's gone to hell and back repeatedly, so it's kind of nice to be able to say, ‘well, look, this is how the real world really looks.’”
One of those strangers from the road was Edmontonian Graham Johnson.
“I met this crazy guy 20 years ago coming through Alberta,” said Bushby’s longtime friend Johnson.
Hearing about the expedition from a friend who passed on Johnson’s phone number after meeting Bushby on a bike trip, Johnson would one day get a call from the man himself.
“I went and picked him up and we spent two weeks together and I helped him along the way and put some money in his pocket and some food in his little wagon that he had and sent him on his way,” Johnson recalled.
Staying connected over the decades, Johnson is rallying support once more in an effort to get his friend back home.
“He has been living a very frugal life. I just thought I needed to help him. I needed to help him just at least get out of the tent and into a real bed a couple times a week with any luck,” Johnson added, noting in the early days of Bushby’s expedition, he would go days without eating because he didn’t always have the money.
Hosting a fundraiser series throughout Alberta, with stops in Edmonton, Red Deer, Banff and Calgary, Johnson and ‘friends of Karl’ are gathering for a night of music and stories at the Banff Centre on Saturday (March 7).
With all the ticket proceeds going directly into Bushby's pocket, the funds will help get him across the finish line, providing him with more than just “gas station food” and other accommodation options, besides his tent pitched on a roadside.
After a performance from Montreal-based JUNO-award winning artist Sam Roberts, who has been following Bushby’s journey for the last couple decades, Bushby will share stories from his years around the world.
“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to be connected to something so massive,” said Johnson. “It's the biggest thing I've ever been witness to and it’s an absolute honour to be as close as I am to this gargantuan challenge.”
When Bushby arrives home in October, he will be the only person to have walked around the entire world and possibly the only one to ever complete the monumental feat, Johnson says.
“Anybody I've ever met in my life would've quit years ago realizing that, ‘Hey, I've already accomplished a lot. Walking through South America, that was enough. I'm going to get on with my life.’ He refused to quit.”
For tickets visit: banffcentre.ca/karl-bushby-get-him-home
Video Link Caspian Sea Crossing August 2024
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