For nearly three decades, **Karl Bushby** has lived a life that defies modern assumptions about speed, convenience, and success. Since 1998, he has been walking an unbroken path around the world, driven by a simple but uncompromising goal: to return home to England using only his own body, without mechanical assistance, flights, or shortcuts. What began as a test of endurance has evolved into something far deeper. After 27 years on the road, Bushby says the most profound lesson he has learned has little to do with survival skills or physical resilience. It is about happiness, and where it truly comes from.

Bushby’s journey, known as the Goliath Expedition, was never designed as a quest for fame or records. It was born from restlessness and imagination. As a former British Army paratrooper, he had been trained for conflict and deployment that never quite materialised. Instead, he found himself living through a comparatively peaceful era, waiting for missions that did not come. That quiet frustration became the seed of an idea that would eventually consume his adult life.

A restless mind turns a map into destiny

Long before he set foot on the first road in southern Chile, Bushby was already walking the world in his mind. As a child in Hull, he spent days roaming outdoors with his brother, returning home only when hunger or daylight forced them back. That instinct to explore was reinforced by growing up in a military household, where movement and discipline were part of everyday life.

By his late twenties, boredom had crept in. Stationed largely in familiar territory, Bushby began drawing lines across maps, imagining distances so vast they seemed almost absurd. One line, stretching from the United Kingdom across Europe and Asia, over the Bering Strait into North America and down through South America, refused to leave him alone. Once the idea took shape, it became impossible to ignore.

In 1998, he resigned from the army, gathered minimal gear, and flew to Punta Arenas, Chile. With around $500 in his pocket, he stepped onto a road that would eventually stretch roughly 36,000 miles. The moment marked a clean break from conventional life. There was no backup plan, no fixed income, and no guarantee of success. The only rules were absolute: walk or swim, and do not return home until every step is completed.

When simple rules collide with real borders

What sounded straightforward on paper quickly collided with geopolitical reality. Borders are not designed for people who refuse vehicles. Visas expire. Governments question motives. Some regions are actively hostile to unauthorised movement. Over the years, Bushby has been detained, imprisoned, and forced to wait years for permission to continue.

The most famous obstacles became legends in expedition circles. He crossed the Darien Gap between South and Central America, a lawless stretch of jungle avoided even by locals. He was arrested in Panama. Russian authorities detained him for months. In Alaska, he came close to freezing to death. He swam across the Caspian Sea over 31 days, battling exhaustion and isolation in open water.

Yet these moments, dramatic as they sound, are not what Bushby describes as the hardest part of the journey.

The slow erosion of certainty

Life on foot strips away illusion quickly. Hunger becomes real in a way most people never experience. Days without food distort perception, turning rocks and shadows into imagined meals. Physical suffering becomes routine, almost manageable. Pain, Bushby says, is easier than people think. It has boundaries. It ends.

What does not end so cleanly is emotional loss.

Over 27 years, Bushby has formed relationships in different countries, languages, and cultures. Each one brought companionship, warmth, and a sense of normal life. Each one eventually ended because the road demanded movement. Leaving people behind became a recurring pattern, and with it came a quiet grief that no amount of physical toughness could absorb.

He describes losing those relationships as the hardest experience of the entire expedition. Not the cold, not the prisons, not the hunger. The absence of shared daily life, of someone waiting at the end of the day, proved far more painful than any blister or injury.

Happiness discovered between encounters

Paradoxically, those same relationships also taught Bushby what happiness actually is. The happiest moments of his journey, he says, were not triumphs of distance or survival, but periods when he was emotionally connected to someone else. Companionship softened the harshness of the road. Shared meals, conversations, and routines transformed endurance into living.

Over time, this lesson expanded beyond romantic relationships. Again and again, Bushby found himself taken in by strangers who asked for nothing in return. Farmers, families, shopkeepers, and villagers across continents offered food, shelter, medical help, and simple kindness. Often there was no shared language, only gestures and smiles.

These encounters reshaped his view of humanity. Despite political tension, cultural differences, and media narratives of danger, Bushby’s lived experience suggested something else entirely. Across borders and belief systems, people were overwhelmingly generous when faced with vulnerability.

A world less hostile than it appears

Walking exposes a person to the world at human speed. There is no insulation, no glass or metal separating you from others. Bushby believes this is why he encountered such kindness. On foot, he was not a threat or a consumer. He was simply a human being passing through.

This perspective challenges many modern assumptions. In an age dominated by headlines of conflict and division, Bushby’s experience suggests that hostility is often amplified by distance and abstraction. Up close, face to face, people behave differently. They feed you. They worry about your health. They wish you luck.

The road, in this sense, became a long experiment in trust. Each day required belief that someone, somewhere, would help when needed. Over 27 years, that belief was rewarded often enough to become conviction.

Redefining success after 27 years

As Bushby makes his way through Europe toward the final stretch back to England, the meaning of the expedition has shifted. Completing the walk remains important, but it is no longer the central achievement. The true transformation has already occurred.

He no longer measures life in milestones or destinations. Instead, he speaks of presence, relationships, and emotional honesty. Happiness, he has learned, is not found in distance covered or hardships overcome, but in connection—however brief—with others.

The journey that began as an extreme physical challenge has become a meditation on what makes life meaningful. In stripping existence down to walking, eating, sleeping, and relating, Bushby discovered something that decades of comfort and efficiency often obscure.

After 27 years of walking, the lesson is disarmingly simple. Endurance can get you across continents. But happiness, the kind that lasts, is built in the moments when you are not alone.

(Adapted from CNBC.com)

Categories: Creativity, Sustainability, Uncategorized