MOSCOW, April 4: A Briton attempting to complete an unbroken walk around the world has been detained by Russian border guards after crossing the frozen Bering Strait, his father said on Tuesday. Former paratrooper Karl Bushby was stopped with American Dimitri Kieffer on April 1 on the remote Chukotka peninsula after a perilous two-week journey across the sea ice bridge between Russia and Alaska.
“If you walk across the Bering Strait you’re very lucky if you make it to Russia at all,” said his father, Keith.
“Apparently they’ve got him holed up in a hotel under a sort of house arrest,” he told Reuters by telephone from Britain.
Russian news agencies quoted local officials as saying the two men were stopped at the village of Uelen for illegally crossing Russia’s border.
“We are still trying to clarify the situation, but we can confirm a British citizen, Karl Christian Bushby, is undergoing checks in Chukotka,” said a British embassy spokesman in Moscow.
The US embassy declined to comment.
Bushby, 37, set off from the tip of South America in 1998 and hopes to return to Britain in 2009, after a journey of some 36,000 miles.
He teamed up with Kieffer, an endurance racer, for the crossing in Alaska.
The pair risked frostbite, polar bears and the ice breaking underneath them as they crossed the Strait.
After a jubilant landfall last week they aimed for Uelen.
“The settlement is probably just a collection of huts and if anybody lives there then this should give the inhabitants something to talk about for the whole of next week,” said their online diary.
It seems they were aware of the potential for bureaucratic glitches.
“After that they will be making their way down the coast ... to the settlement of Provideniya where they hope to sort things out with the authorities. That could be a whole other adventure,” the diary continued.
