WATCH: The Only Known Surf Trip To Pakistan

Luke Gartside

6 years ago

After Mick’s mythical short ‘The Snake’ dropped online, the internet immediately set about trying to guess its location. Among the guesses was one particularly out there suggestion; Pakistan.

It was fairly quickly dismissed by following a pretty simple thread of logic; were Ripcurl really likely to send their golden boy, who had, lest we forget, a few years early had a close call with a shark, to a hotbed of extremist activity just to get the clips? No probably not. And the internet masses moved on to their next hot lead.

However, our interest was piqued by the image of Pakistan that had been dredged from the archives and we set about trying to learn more. Our search lead us to this Surfline article, documenting a trip from 2001 undertaken by twelve intrepid surf explorers. We subsequently included Pakistan in our list of five places you never knew had waves, hitting up original trip organiser and Stormrider aficionado Antony ‘Yep’ Colas, to find out more. He told us about long point breaks, exposed beachies, and a rich variety of other set ups, but added that due to the rampant infrastructural development that has occurred since, many may have been destroyed. Now, seventeen years on, ‘Yep’ has uploaded the film documenting the initial trip to youtube. As for returning, travel has been severely restricted since 9/11 (which occurred only months after the initial trip) and so it seems likely that this short snapshot will contain all we know about Pakistan’s surfing potential for the foreseeable future.

Cover photo Dan Haylock // Stormrider Guide

Low Pressure will be releasing The World Stormrider Surf Guide in Spring 2018 – the most comprehensive review of Global surfing destinations ever produced.

Check out our favourite from their back-catalogie, the excellent Stormrider Guide To Europe here.

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