Oxford, Stonehenge and a Garden maze

I bid farewell to 2007 in a very enjoyable way - lazing around at home, plenty of reading and dreaming done, travelled around and for a change gave the New Year's eve party a miss.

I've read and marvelled about garden mazes - those huge mazes fashioned with thick hedges. I was so fascinated by them at one point in my childhood that I used to dream about wandering inside one of those mazes and getting stuck in there most of the time. I headed on to the closest garden maze near my place at Hampton Court Palace Gardens. The size of the maze and the fact that one could see through the skinny hedges did spoil the fun - but I did get to live my dream and navigate my team to the exit successfully. :)

The rest of the gardens were well worth the visit too. It sure was good to see so much green during winter.

All I could think about when we were wandering around the 39 different colleges in Oxford was about Indira Gandhi - the Iron-lady of India. She was a role model for a large majority of girls in my generation. The only woman Prime Minister of India who was the epitome of a strong character, who was the smart woman who ruled the country, had the balance of grace and belligerence in her personality, and wore a modern outlook that really stood out at that time - Indira Gandhi is one lady who my generation was very curious about and awed by.

She studied in the Somerville College, University of Oxford till 1941 - the time when the Independence movement was slowly gaining steam in India. Wonder how she would have felt living and studying in British land while her father wrote to her about the exploits of the British in India. How she got any studying done when her country was in a big crisis is beyond me.

Stonehenge - This place looks exactly as it would have in the grainy picture in your history textbook. But being there, walking around it, listening to all the myths about it, why it was built, what were the ceremonies held around it 5000 years ago is a commoving experience. Not many would find it exciting driving an hour just to see some big stones - but I am not one of them and I love to woo the charming past.