image copyrightKevin Shoesmith/BBC
British traveler Carl Bushby completed his 28-year journey, during which he covered 50 thousand kilometers, and finally returned to his parents' home with his mother in Hull.
Approaching the door of his house, he admitted: “It’s good to be back home. It seems as if all this is not happening in reality.”
Carl Bushby, a former paratrooper, set out in November 1998 when he was 29 years old. He set a goal for himself - to cover the entire route to home without breaking two rules. He forbade himself from returning to the UK until the very end of the trip and from using any transport. The traveler is now 57 years old and has returned to Hull, where he was born and where his mother, Angela Bushby, is waiting for him.
Crowds gathered in Hull city center to greet Bushby before he walked the last few kilometers home.
Mayor Maria Coward was among those who came to meet Karl Bushby. “I’m sure there’s never been a homecoming like this before. This is just crazy! Thank you so much,” said Carl Bushby.
As he approached the house, he seemed barely able to find the right words.
“It all seems unreal. This is the end of a 28-year journey,” he said.
A little later, when there was very little left to go home, he remarked: “Everything is so familiar.”
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His mother, who had not seen him for ten years, said: “It’s so good that he came home.”
On Sunday, as he crossed the Humber Bridge (near Kingston upon Hull) into East Yorkshire, Bushby was greeted by his 36-year-old son Adam, a 12-year-old granddaughter he had never met before, his father and brothers.
“It was amazing,” Bushby said of the long-awaited reunion with his family.
"Adventurer" at home
Carl Bushby says he may have a tough time adjusting to normal life in the days and weeks after he returns.
“Everything that makes up my essence, everything that I know about myself - all this will not be. And that's the problem. A kind of identity crisis arises: after all, Karl is, first of all, an adventurer, he was one for half his life,” the traveler admitted.
Carl Bushby has already said that he has always been drawn to wandering. The opportunity to go on this trip came to him after his marriage broke up: his wife and her son left for Northern Ireland.
image copyrightKarl Bushby
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When Carl Bushby set out from Punta Arenas, the southernmost city on Earth on the southern tip of Chile, in 1998, with a backpack on his back and the sole goal of walking home to the British city of Hull, he expected the entire journey to take about 12 years. However, the difficulties of the journey and various unforeseen circumstances, including the coronavirus pandemic, pushed the moment of returning home further and further.
Over the years of his journey, the traveler covered more than 48 thousand km and crossed 29 countries of the world.
According to him, due to visa restrictions, he could not spend too much time in some countries.
His route did not involve solely moving forward. In particular, he returned several times to Mexico, where life is relatively inexpensive: that's where he spent the pandemic.
Bushby also periodically traveled to the United States, where his sponsors are located.
However, each time before the start of the next stage of the journey, Bushby returned exactly to the point at which his walking journey was interrupted.
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