Some things are worth dying for: Karl Bushby's 28-year walk

Karl Bushby is a former paratrooper who has spent 28 years walking from Punta Arenas, Chile, with the self-imposed rule of never using transport to advance his journey, restarting on foot wherever forced to stop. He has covered roughly 36,000 miles across 29 countries, breaking the record for the longest unbroken foot journey and completing extraordinary feats such as modern-era crossings of the Bering Strait and a 31-day swim of the Caspian Sea. The expedition relied on a customised trolley nicknamed the Beast, two iterations of which carried his camping gear and supplies, and was repeatedly delayed by practical obstacles - visa bans, wars, pandemics, lost sponsors and enforcement - so a planned 12-year trip stretched into nearly three decades.

The profile traces the background that made the trip possible: a dyslexic schoolboy turned determined paratrooper who found institutional life stifling and cultivated a lifelong wanderlust after drawing routes on maps. It recounts near-death encounters - kidnapping, detention and deportation in Russia, threats at gunpoint, polar-bear danger, near-drowning and long periods stuck waiting for paperwork - and quieter realities of eating gas-station food and aging on the road. He is portrayed as uncompromising and tenacious, accompanied at times by fellow walker Angela Maxwell, ambivalent to fame and alternately hailed as heroic or reckless as he nears the final leg home.