Surfers on Karachi's coast chase waves and dreams

Attiq Ur Rehman is determined to follow his dream to become Pakistan's first professional surfer despite his father's concern for his future, a lack of equipment and the messy waves near Karachi.

"I don’t care about the money right now. I just want to compete," the 21-year-old says, shrugging off his father's plea to take up fishing so he can get married and support his family. "It's my surfer attitude."

Rehman's family are part of a poor coastal community in southern Pakistan that usually make a living from fishing or as lifeguards watching over more affluent residents of Karachi when they come for a day at the beach.

"I told him a thousand times (to stop surfing) but he still doesn't listen," said Rehman's father, Muhammad Rafiq.

Rehman was a lifeguard but gave it up to concentrate on his surfing, which he started aged nine, and founded a new community that calls itself "Surfers of Bulleji".

The group has grown to around 50 and have gone viral on social media in a country where cricket and hockey are the main sports.

The group consists of surfing enthusiasts from surrounding coastal villages, some aged as young as eight.

One of cohort, Mujahid Baloch, a 24-year-old fisherman, first saw surfing on social media and instantly took a shine to it.

"Slowly, through watching, we learned. No one taught us," he said.

Though Sri Lanka and the Maldives to the south are on global surfers' hit lists, Pakistan's arid 1,000km (620 miles) of coastline is usually poorly suited for surfing, relying on local winds to generate waves that are often small and messy, or rare cyclone swells.

"When all of Karachi was being given an advisory to stay away from the sea, and a cyclone was approaching, me and the boys were getting ready to go to the beach," said Rehman. "The waves were ideal for us."

While an occasional visiting surfer might join them for a paddle and some other villages along the coast have small