The following year, while teaching art at a school in Karachi, he came into contact with leading Pakistani artists Abdur Rahman Chughtai and Shakir Ali, with whom he developed a lasting friendship. After a period living and painting in Kashmir, Sultan returned to his native Narail in 1953. He settled down in an abandoned building overlooking the Chitra River, where he lived with an eclectic collection of pets. He lived close to the land and far from the outside art world for the next twenty-three years, developing a reputation as a whimsical recluse and a Bohemian.