Karaikal 9/9-11/08

Bal Chander and Aatreyee

Our host and hostess in Karaikal

Our Karaikal home

Aatreyee in her kitchen

Beach at Karaikal

The trees in the background were planted after the tsunami

Self portrait of BC
On the way home from the beach

Krishna

This one's for Dexter
Ice cream at another beach the next day

South Indian dinner at a wonderful little place

(that's Kumar, our terrific waiter)"BC, my camera battery went dead. Please bring your camera and take pictures of this wonderful place for me!!"

I didn't know until later, that the restaurant was full of BC's students who were laughing at him while I was telling him which picture to take.
(Kumar's son in blue)
Outside restaurant
Shopping after dinner
After ice cream, after dinner, after shopping, we had sodas at

7 Eleven cafe

From the bus leaving the Karaikal bus stand the following morning

Gopal, Krishna, and I took a 3.5 hour bus ride from Puducherry to Karaikal on Tuesday, 9/9/08, to visit our friends BC and Aatreyee. Bal Chandar is teaching Pathology in a medical college down there, so we stayed with them in Staff Housing. We had a wonderful couple of days with these two young people. Gopal and Krishna had known Aatreyee when she worked for Joint Assistance Centre/India years ago. She has since been working at Human Rights Law Network, publishing a book, "Child Marriages and the Law in India," in 2005. I met Aatreyee five years ago when she visited Gopal in California. We had not met her new husband, Bal Chander, until she brought him to meet us in Pondicherry a couple weeks ago. We really enjoy their company and are proud to call them our friends. Karaikal, where they live is an uncongested, coastal town - very clean and uncomplicated. We really like it there. If we don't find a nicer, cooler place, we may have to come back to Karaikal to look for a place to live. In the meantime, we look forward to coming back to visit.