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?

In that case, they said, I could try it. The road did continue. It was just rather muddy.

Suddenly they were almost encouraging the adventure.

I continued.

Every corner became a small question.

Would the road continue? Would it disappear? Would I end up at a farm? Would I have to turn the motorcycle around?

It reminded me, on a much smaller scale, of the feeling I’d experienced on my Spiti and Leh-Ladakh trip four years earlier.

It demanded attention.

And it was enormous fun.

Every turn was a question mark.

Stumbling into Javagal

Later I rode into a village whose name immediately seemed familiar.

Javagal.

Of course. Javagal Srinath.

I’d stumbled into the village associated with one of India’s great fast bowlers without intending to go there at all.

Then I found something even better: a temple.

I stopped.

The moment I began looking at it, the architecture was unmistakable: the intricate stonework and geometric forms immediately reminded me of Belur and Halebidu.

A Hoysala temple.

It was smaller than those famous monuments—almost like encountering a miniature version of them sitting quietly in a village.

And it was quiet.

Hardly anybody was around.

I walked through the temple and its surroundings and spoke with a few local people.

I hadn’t searched for it. I hadn’t put a pin on a map.

I’d simply ridden into it.

That made the discovery much more satisfying.

A man-made gorge

Another unplanned stop came beside an irrigation canal.

I’ve been fascinated by dams, irrigation and geography since childhood, so naturally I stopped.

Initially it looked like a conventional large canal.

Later I encountered it again beside the road.

This time the landscape was extraordinary.

The canal ran through such a deep cutting that it looked almost like a gorge. Engineers had effectively carved through the hill to carry water across the landscape.

A man-made gorge.

On a motorcycle, stopping for something like this required almost no decision at all.

See something interesting. Pull over. Look at it. Then continue.

That simple freedom was becoming one of my favourite things about travelling this way.

Chitradurga after dark

Staying in Chitradurga was itself something of a detour.

The accommodation wasn’t really a hotel. It was a simple roadside lodge beside the owners' home, run by a group of youngsters.

No restaurant. No hotel infrastructure.

But it was inexpensive, friendly and wonderfully quiet.

Going into town that evening revealed something completely unexpected.

Chitradurga was preparing for its annual Ganapati procession.

There were police everywhere. Roads had been closed, and I heard that several lakh people could attend the event.

The main procession wouldn’t begin until the following morning, after I planned to leave.

But the town had already transformed.

Around two kilometres of road had been illuminated.

After dinner at Prasadam, I walked for about fifteen minutes through the town and then fifteen minutes back.

Lights everywhere. Crowds. Festival preparations.

And, despite being a relatively small city, an astonishing amount of honking.

Then I returned to the quiet lodge outside town.

Another experience I hadn’t planned.