How did Karl Bushby pay for 28 years of walking? He started with $500

About $500.

That is roughly what Karl Bushby had in his pocket when he started walking at the bottom of Chile on 1 November 1998. "I had no support," he told The Washington Post.

He is now a few weeks from his mum's front door in Hull. The world has cheered him all week. But one question cut through the cheering. A post asking how he paid for 28 years of travel was seen more than 1.1 million times in two days.

The writer wondered if he was secretly rich. An inheritance? Sponsors? Odd jobs? People in the replies had the same guesses.

The real answer is less glamorous than a trust fund. It is also a lot more surprising.

How much money did Karl Bushby start with?

Almost none. Bushby left the Parachute Regiment and set off north from Punta Arenas, at the tip of South America, with about $500, according to The Washington Post. He also had paper maps and a cart for his kit.

There was no support team. No big company behind him. He was a former soldier from Hull with a line drawn on a map, from Chile all the way back to England.

If you missed how it all started, we told the full story of his walk here.

Where does Karl Bushby sleep?

Mostly in a tent by the side of the road. That is the main reason the walk was ever possible.

He told The Washington Post he usually camps along his route. When people invite him in, he sleeps in their homes. In the early years in the Americas, he said he was in "survival mode". He described finding food at the side of the road just to keep going.

He also walks, so he never buys a ticket. His one rule is no transport of any kind to move forward. No car, no bus, no train, no boat. A man who cannot use a train will never need a train fare.

Who sponsors Karl Bushby?

Over the years, a mix of people. The Washington Post says his family started to help him with money first. His mum once sent cash by Western Union when things got desperate.

Then word spread. Ordinary people began to donate. Companies got in touch and offered to sponsor him.

The biggest early break was a book. By the time he walked into Canada in 2003, he had a book deal, according to The Washington Post. Giant Steps came out in 2005. It is made of the diary notes he wrote at the end of his walking days. His publisher pitched it as a solo effort, with no huge support teams and no large sponsorship deals.

He also turned up in BBC TV reports, and Alaska became a kind of base. Alaska Public Media reported in 2011 that he had spent much of the past ten years in Fairbanks.

What happened to his money in 2008?

It vanished. In spring 2008 he stopped walking in Bilibino, a small town in Russia's frozen far east. Then the world banking crash hit.

His sponsors pulled out. Alaska Public Media said the recession made his sponsorship "sink". Bushby could not afford to carry on.

So he moved to Mexico, because living there was cheap. He spent two years there trying to find new backers, according to Alaska Public Media. For a long time nothing came.

Photo: Maxinvestigator / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Getting back to the ice was not cheap either. In 2011 he needed a small chartered plane to fly him and his gear from Nome in Alaska back to Russia. The cost was about $14,000, Alaska Public Media reported.

A flight like that did not break his rule. He was going back to the exact spot where he had stopped, not moving forward.

Is Werner Herzog paying for Karl Bushby's walk?

Not personally, as far as anyone has said. But a film company is.

In 2011, Alaska Public Media reported that Bushby had finally met two TV producers who were thinking about a documentary or a series. It was "not a done deal" back then.

Something clearly came of it. AFP says a production company has backed Bushby for the past 16 years. That takes it back to around 2010. The company gives him money and help with the trips, pays for gear so he can film his own walk, and keeps all his footage.

That company is making a feature film about him called Walk of Life. The famous German director Werner Herzog is part of it. He was on the beach near Dover with a camera crew when Bushby swam ashore on 5 October.

Photo: Raffi Asdourian from New York, United States / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

So for the last 16 years, the walk has also been a film shoot.

How did he pay for the Russia ban and the Caspian swim?

Slowly, and with a lot of noise. When Russia banned him for five years in 2013, he did not sit still. He walked from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington DC as a protest. He told the Big Issue he was trying to build a media campaign at the same time. He says it worked. The ban was lifted in 2014.

Then Iran would not let him in. The only way forward without breaking his rules was across the Caspian Sea. He and the American walker Angela Maxwell swam it in 2024, with safety boats beside them, sleeping on the boats at night.

That plan was not cheap to pull together. Bushby told the Big Issue it took an extra year to sort out "the logistics and the funding and support". Explorersweb says the whole plan took two years.

He lost almost half his time to visas, bans and money problems, not walking.

Who is helping him get home?

His friends, this year. In March 2026, people in Canada held fundraisers to pay for the last stretch.

One was in Edmonton on 4 March, at the Citadel Theatre. Tickets were $54, and the event page said the money would help "complete the final stage of the expedition". Three days later, the Banff Centre hosted a night called Karl Bushby Get Him Home!, run by friends of Karl. Bushby was due to be there himself.

Photo: Region 5 Photography / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

So the answer to that viral question is: All of the above, except the inheritance. A book. Sponsors who came and went. A film company. Fundraisers. His family. And thousands of strangers.

Is Karl Bushby rich now?

No. He says he will reach Hull with empty pockets. "I'm going to arrive home with nothing," he told AFP. He knows he has to get settled in what he calls the grown-up world again.

He is not bitter about it. In Colombia, armed men once trapped him in a café and questioned him. He showed them newspaper clippings about his walk. They ended up buying him a new coat, he told the Big Issue.

Stories like that are why he talks about the walk the way he does. "The overwhelming kindness of strangers was a shocker for me," he told The Washington Post. He says 99.99 percent of the people he has met were the very best in humanity.

He is due at his mum's gate on 1 November. Here is his countdown to Hull.

He set off with $500. He comes home with nothing in the bank. Everything in between was paid for by people who believed a man could walk around the world. In a few weeks, he proves them right.