A man left home in 1998 and promised his mom he wouldn't come back until he'd walked around the world. He couldn't use any transportation at all. He just got home. The walk took 28 years, and his son saw him 4 times the entire time. Karl Bushby was a British paratrooper when he left Punta Arenas, Chile in November 1998 with about $500 and paper maps. He figured 12 years. The walking mostly kept that schedule. He went up the length of South America, survived the Darién Gap, and made it through Alaska. Then in 2006 he became the first person in history to walk across the Bering Strait into Russia. 14 days on drifting ice, 150 miles of zigzagging to cross a 58-mile gap. His partner lost a finger to frostbite. Russia arrested him the moment he arrived. Fined him $72 and deported him. The ice took two weeks. The paperwork took the better part of a decade. Russia capped his visas at 90 days at a time, so he crossed Siberia in fragments, leaving when each visa ran out and coming back to the exact same spot so the line never broke. When Moscow stopped letting him in at all, he walked 4,800 km from Los Angeles to the Russian embassy in Washington DC to ask in person. They banned him for five years anyway. Last week, at 57, he hit the final border. Channel Tunnel bosses wouldn't let him use the service tunnel, so he swam the English Channel. 20 hours in the water spread across three days. Then he walked up the beach near Dover. 28 years. 29 countries. 31,000 miles. He says he's coming home with nothing and has to figure out the grown-up world again. Every adventurer talks about finishing what they start. Karl Bushby gave it half his life.