Karl Bushby embraced his weeping mother in his arms Monday as he returned to his northern England home to complete a 28-year odyssey to walk around the world "Where have you been?” his mother, Angela, asked as he arrived outside the home he left in 1998 that was now decked with a banner saying "Welcome Home Son.” He didn’t need to tell her.

Bushby set out from Punta Arenas, Chile, on Nov.

1, 1998, and walked 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) across four continents and 30 countries to get home.

He navigated shifting ice over the Bering Strait and swam across the Caspian Sea and English Channel to avoid taking a boat or plane – or any transport – to propel him forward.

He vowed not to return until he could complete the journey on foot.

It was an eye-opening adventure full of danger and drudgery that was interrupted for years at a time by the unexpected: the 2008 financial crash that sapped funding from sponsors, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and mountains of bureaucratic red tape to get across international borders.

On the final day of the journey, Bushby pushed his cart toward a hero’s welcome at city hall before setting off for the last stretch to see his mother.

"Sorry to keep you waiting,” he joked to the crowd of hundreds who cheered his arrival.

"Is that it, is it done?” The ex-paratrooper said he looked like he was 10 years old when he left his mother's row house at the age of 29.

He returned at 57 – softer, grayer and weathered, but far more worldly.

"They say it takes a village, but literally it took a world to get me here,” Bushby said.

"The kindness of strangers, so many, from individuals to nation-states, got me back here today.

I didn’t do this alone.

There was a big team.

The biggest team.

Earth.” Bushby had a thirst for adventure, but his mission only came into focus when his father, Keith, sent him a birthday card in the mid-90s.

His dad, an army veteran himself, mentioned an argument two special forces troops had about the possibility of walking from London to New York over the Bering land bridge, believed by some scientists to have been used by early humans to migrate from Asia to the Americas at a time of lower sea levels.

Perilous jungles, scorching deserts and frozen tundra slowed him down, but bureaucratic holdups brought his adventure to a halt for long periods.

Bushby originally calculated the distance could be covered in about five years, but he knew that was unrealistic.

"You just dump a whole bucket full of reality....