This is Part 5, the final instalment of Four Mornings on the Classic 350, a five-part motorcycle journey through Karnataka that was supposed to last four days, but became five.

I was at Chitradurga Fort at six in the morning.

The entrance procedure was unnecessarily irritating—online registration, identity details and the increasingly familiar feeling that everything in modern life somehow needs to know who you are.

Then I entered the fort.

And forgot about it.

The sun was rising.

I climbed higher through successive layers of fortification, catching the morning light over the landscape.

I’d misunderstood Chitradurga Fort before visiting it.

I had imagined a fort primarily as a defensive structure—a place built to keep enemies out and protect the rulers within.

But Chitradurga was an entire seat of power spread across the hill.

It had reservoirs and systems for self-sufficiency. Temples. Areas for exercise and recreation. Palace complexes, although much of those structures are now ruined.

And walls.

So many walls.

The deeper I went, the larger the place seemed.

Two hours wasn’t enough.

Then I reached Obavvana Kindi.

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This is Part 4 of Four Mornings on the Classic 350, a five-part motorcycle journey through Karnataka that was supposed to last four days, but became five.

The next morning I left Hassan using a new navigation app, Kurviger.

At first, I wondered whether that had been a mistake.

Instead of taking the obvious roads out of town, it sent me through little side streets. They were full of bumps and badly repaired cuts where utility work had been done.

Then, perhaps fifteen minutes later, the city fell away.

The roads became smooth.

The traffic disappeared.

And the ride became magnificent.

I realised I wasn’t constantly checking my mirrors anymore because almost nobody was coming up behind me.

That meant I could look around.

There were paddy fields around Hassan, then plantations and villages, and later coconut and other crops as the landscape changed towards Vani Vilas.

Not taking the highway was turning out to be the best decision of the day.

Then Kurviger offered me a shortcut.

I’d selected avoid unpaved roads.

Apparently the app and I had slightly different definitions of unpaved.

Within a minute, the road became gravel.

Then mud.

Then something that barely looked like a road at all.

I stopped near some villagers.

They looked at me with understandable curiosity. Why was this man on a loaded Royal Enfield riding into what was essentially a farm track?

They told me I shouldn’t continue. It wasn’t really a proper road.

I explained that I wasn’t lost.

I was exploring the countryside.

Their attitude immediately changed.

Oh! You’ve actually come to see the villages?

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This is Part 3 of Four Mornings on the Classic 350, a five-part motorcycle journey through Karnataka that was supposed to last four days, but became five.

This was the day when the journey really became a motorcycle tour.

The roads through the coffee country were superb: bends, greenery, plantations and relatively little traffic.

I rarely went beyond 60 km/h.

There was no reason to.

On roads like these, speed would have defeated the purpose.

Instead I began learning the motorcycle better. One lesson was particularly useful: on a bend, I needed to select the lower gear before entering the turn rather than changing down in the middle of it.

The bike was teaching me how it wanted to be ridden.

Then, between Somwarpet and Shanivarasanthe, I decided to move into smaller village road instead of the state highway.

Found a detour.

I took it.

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This is Part 2 of Four Mornings on the Classic 350, a five-part motorcycle journey through Karnataka that was supposed to last four days, but became five.

One of the nicest stops of the entire trip wasn’t new at all.

Between Hunsur and Periyapatna is a Café Coffee Day that is open twenty-four hours. Strangely, I had been there twice before over perhaps the last ten years.

Now I found myself there again.

I was tired. I’d woken early, and the riding was catching up with me. The air-conditioning alone made the place feel like a refuge.

I ordered a cold Devil’s Own, sat down and stayed for perhaps thirty to forty-five minutes.

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This is Part 1 of Four Mornings on the Classic 350, a five-part motorcycle journey through South Karnataka that was supposed to last four days, but became five.

I didn’t sleep particularly well the night before the ride.

Thunderstorms kept waking me up, and each time I heard the rain I started wondering about the trip. How waterproof was my kit really? Would everything packed on the motorcycle stay dry?

I’d packed my waterproof jacket and trousers in the pannier the previous evening. By five in the morning, it was obvious there wasn’t much point leaving them there. I put them on inside the house.

Everything else had been packed the night before. All that remained was to go downstairs, attach the luggage to the Classic 350 and leave.

At exactly 6:30, I set off.

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