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Ugh, I looked this up and it completely ruined it for me:

https://refuga.com/karl-bushby-the-man-who-chose-to-walk-aro...

This is how much he had to sacrifice. Leaving his only son when he was just five and not being able to watch him grow up like any other normal father. He also sacrificed a father/son relationship that may never be restored. “Out of everyone I knew in this world, I knew my son least of all.” Karl didn’t have any means of communication with his son for years but managed to reach him after contacting one of his friends on Facebook. While he was away, his son was suffering from depression and self abuse and had to use medication and therapy.

That's not sacrifice, that's abandonment. I have a young son not far from that age and trying to imagine how he'd feel if daddy just walked off nearly brings me to tears.

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Thank you for posting this.

I no longer want to read about this person's journey or care to, because this is exactly the kind of person we need to stop hero worshipping. The irreparable damage to society from child abandonment is so large, that whatever he accomplished(?) by doing his stunt is negated.

I'm going to be unapologetic in saying that because this is irresponsible, immature behavior. He had a child, and then decided to leave for 20+ years to pursue his selfish interests while 100% abandoning his family and spouse to raise the child themselves. It's 100% trying to run away once he saw how difficult raising a family is and turned it into some BS stunt. That is also a relationship and pain and suffering that should never be forgiven, not during this immature person's lifetime.

Advice to others when you're thinking of doing this sort of thing where you abandon the people that love you to pursue some extreme interest. You may get exactly what you're looking for, with the cost of people never being close to you ever again.

Yes.

As a point of interest, the English do have a sort of stiff upper lip thing going on since forever. It's normal in English upper class families to send kids to boarding school. This was partly enabled by empire, but seems to have persisted. I have English friends who think nothing of living on another continent to their children.

On the mental bearings of extreme travelers, I used to do some long distance (multi-week) cycle touring and offered accommodation to others through platforms for this purpose while living in China. They say you have to be half-mad to get in to cycle touring in the first place. Some of these people were very much in a weird mental place. After a bad experience with a German woman I stopped participating in these systems. Some of them would turn up broke with no shoes really in need of help. A subset of the people who finish go on to become motivational speakers. Most of them probably wind up happy, but grizzled and impoverished with more physical than mental health.

Doubt. There's lots of English stereotypes that I've learnt are false after living here 7 years.

Politeness, queuing, etc all poppycock and not applicable as general rules.

I can only speak from personal experience, but a bad father/mother is worse than no father/mother.

The mother left the country and went to Belgrade, where Carl was not allowed entry. The mother is who eliminated the possibility of contact. Karl left England after the estrangement. It was part of the reason for his journey, as he told me at least.

It seems like it was more complicated than that:

> He found refuge, at first, in family life. In his early 20s, while stationed in Belfast, he met a local woman and had a child with her, Adam. In 1995, though, the marriage crumbled while the Bushbys were living in Hampshire, England. Adam and his mother returned to war-torn Belfast, where Karl, as a British soldier, was forbidden to visit. He found himself “alone, wondering where my life was going.” He created for himself the ultimate challenge: a journey that would show his paratrooper mates he was no runt.

He didn't leave until 3 years after he'd already been separated from them.

I'm not saying it's good that he didn't try to have more of a relationship with his son, obviously not. But it seems like it was already a complicated and broken relationship with the mother, across countries. Going on his trip wasn't walking away from an otherwise functional family.

https://archive.md/20250528132130/https://www.washingtonpost...

I have a 2 year old daughter and I'm about to have a son in February. Walking away from them is unfathomable. I can't imagine the regret I'd feel at my old age, having lost the few short years where I get to watch my children grow up, just so I can walk to some places.

There's far more depth and mystery to be explored in raising a human than there will ever be as a tourist. The deep stupidity it takes to think otherwise is depressing to behold.

I’m not defending this guy, but many fathers leave because they don’t want to have family. It could have nothing to do with any of his other plans.

I leave often to go to the mountains because I could not live an entirely domestic life.

It is just a day or two at a time but I realized at some point that this is what I have to do to be able to be a caring husband and father. If I don’t I will become depressed and miserable and no amount of loving them will overcome it. I am much more useful as a happy and functional human being 350 days a year than a miserable one for 365.

That's different from what the article was describing, though. What you do is just normal; you gotta take a break at times for your sanity.

It’s interesting you found this tidbit because it plays into what I often think about the people who do odd endeavors like this.

Some of these “make the news for being extraordinary” obsessions really seem to be something where the person in question should be talking to a therapist/psychiatrist before undertaking them.

Any of those types of “solo sailing the Pacific Ocean” or “performing [repetitive task] [longer/further] than anyone else” or “knitting 300,000 scarves for every sick child in the country” or “visiting every Rainforest Cafe” come across as untreated mental illness when you step back from the inspirational journalistic tone that these stories often take.

I always wonder what hole in people’s lives they’re trying to plug when they do crazy stuff like that.

Yeah that is nuts, whenever I think about doing a huge hike/bike adventure I always stop becuase... I can't abandon my dog for 4 months haha. This dude abandoned his son forever?

I will never defend this guy, but, after being upset with him for, oh, about twenty comments here now, I wonder:

“what was the mom like?”

I am not sure that every inspiring action has to be performed by an inspiring person. His family values sadden me, but his story provokes thought. I am not sure I have to admire everyone…

I like to follow some adventures people take. Like cycling across continents for years. Especially since I have a small child so it is totally impossible for me to do. Even basic travelling for holidays is a challenge. Sad to see someone abandon their family to do that, seems like some kind of mental health issue.

Yeah, ruins the whole story. He's a bum and a dead beat.

Talk about "my dad left to get milk"

At this point, the milk has become yoghurt, the yoghurt has become cheese, and the cheese has become a cow again. (Is that how it works?)

(Not quite; you need to add yoghurt to the milk, in order to make yoghurt. For the rest, though, all you need are bacteria for the cheese and cow to develop naturally.)

Fed the cheese to a cow

Talk about “my dad left to get a pack of cigarettes” :)

He didn’t leave until years after the mother had moved to Belgrade (where he cannot enter due to his military service) The estrangement from his son was devastating to him and was one of the motives for his journey.

It’s remarkable how eager people are to jump to conclusions about the role of the mother in the estrangement.

In my observation estrangement of fathers from children is usually forced by mothers who don’t want strings attached. I’ve been in the periphery of several such situations, and never in one where the father walked away… but that also probably has to do with my cultural background. I have heard it is alarmingly common in some cultural circumstances.

Yeah... What a terrible person.

He took the family's money, bought a plane ticket to south america for himself and a bunch of gear for himself. Who knows what he actually left them with. And then disappears for 20+ years.

I honestly hope that before this whole thing happened he was on his way towards a divorce so this abandonment was expected.

I have a 6 year old and yeah....this angers me.

If a person is terrible, that does not mean that it's not interesting to read about them and look what are they up to. It makes story have more depth. Although I agree, abandoning a child is surely bad.

“Worse than an infidel” I believe is the phrase.

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