World walker: The explorer who walked across Alaska and the globe for nearly three decades nears end of journey

Karl Bushby has been walking around the world longer than some readers have been alive. He’s walked long enough to outlast sponsors, wars, pandemics, Russian politics, and even shifting ice floes.

And in that span, he made history from Alaska, becoming the first person ever to walk from the United States to Russia across the frozen Bering Strait.

Bushby, the British ex-paratrooper who set out 27 years ago to circle the globe on foot with “unbroken footsteps,” is now in the final year of his Goliath Expedition — a 36,000-mile journey that began in 1998 in Punta Arenas, Chile, and is expected to conclude in his hometown of Hull, England, in 2026.

As newspapers and broadcasters worldwide revisit his story, it is easy to forget that crucial chapter of this odyssey that unfolded in Alaska.

Watch on YouTube as Bushby crosses the Bering Sea.

Bushby reached Alaska in 2005 after seven years of walking north through South and Central America, including a push through the wild Darién Gap in Panama. In Fairbanks, he prepared for one of the most daring crossings ever attempted: walking the Bering Strait.

In March 2006, alongside French adventurer Dimitri Kieffer, Bushby spent 14 days navigating 150 miles of drifting, broken sea ice to reach Siberia. It was a winding, dangerous route far longer than the strait’s actual width but the only safe way forward. No one had ever walked from Alaska to Russia before in recorded history.

The triumph was followed by chaos. Russian border officers detained the pair for entering at an unauthorized point, threatening to ban Bushby from the country entirely, which would have ended the expedition. Diplomatic intervention, including help from Chukotka Governor Roman Abramovich, ultimately allowed him to continue.

Over the next several years, Russian visa restrictions repeatedly pushed Bushby back to Alaska. He returned briefly in late 2006 after his initial deportation, again in November 2007 when his visa expired after walking roughly 620 miles inside Russia, and once more in the summer of 2008 for what became his final extended stay in the state.

Alaska, with its familiarity and logistical support, served as his fallback while he navigated Russian bureaucracy, financial setbacks, and the narrow late-winter walking windows when frozen rivers made travel possible.

After 2008, Bushby continued east across Russia and into Mongolia, Central Asia, and Europe. He endured years of delays, including a temporary Russian ban in 2013, the loss of sponsors during a global financial crisis, and pandemic disruptions. In 2024, he famously swam 179 miles across the Caspian Sea to avoid traveling through Iran or Russia. It was a 31-day open-water feat that echoed the audacity of his Bering crossing.

Today, at age 56, Bushby is walking through Europe with just over 1,300 miles remaining. As of early December 2025 he was near the Hungary–Slovakia border, pushing his cart down muddy roadside tracks and contemplating his final obstacle: Entering the United Kingdom without using mechanized transport. If he cannot gain access to a Channel Tunnel service passage, he has said he will swim the English Channel.

For nearly three decades, Bushby has carried out one of the last great terrestrial expeditions: A single continuous line of footsteps stretching from the tip of South America through the Alaska winter and across the roof of the world. And for Alaskans, his legend is inseparable from the moment he stepped off our shore and kept walking, all the way to Russia.