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.

This was personal in a different way.

The story of Onake Obavva had been one of my favourites since childhood. For years, that narrow opening in the fort had existed only in a story.

Now I was standing there.

There was no need to manufacture a profound feeling around it.

It simply felt wonderful to finally see a place I’d imagined since I was young.

Between Obavvana Kindi, the sunrise and the scale of the fort itself, the random decision to stay in Chitradurga had produced one of the highlights of the entire journey.

The least interesting road

The remainder of the final day was much less romantic.

It was mostly highway.

Breakfast was good. Later I stopped at a Café Coffee Day, ordered one drink and was given another. I couldn’t be bothered arguing, so I drank it.

It was actually fine.

I also finally tested the electronic tyre inflator I’d been carrying.

The front tyre should have been around 30 psi. It was at about 24–24.5.

The little inflator brought it up remarkably quickly. The rear was already at 35, so I left it alone.

One more piece of touring equipment had proved its usefulness.

Then, between Tumakuru and Nelamangala, came one last unexpectedly good stop.

Mandarin, inside the Siddhartha medical-institution campus, was modern and funky and rather expensive.

I had a refreshing mocktail.

Then I ordered a handmade sourdough pizza.

It was superb—genuinely comparable with some of the best pizza I’d eaten in London.

I deliberately stayed for thirty to forty-five minutes.

There was no point rushing towards Bengaluru.

Unfortunately, Bengaluru wasn’t going anywhere.

The final approach was miserable.

Heavy traffic. Bad roads. Noise.

After several days in the Karnataka countryside, I found myself thinking that some village roads were genuinely better than the roads in the city.

By the time I was nearing home, I was exhausted.

And one thought kept occurring to me:

Why the hell am I here? I should be somewhere remote.

I reached home at around four in the afternoon.

After two hours' rest, I went to see my best friend Nachiket and stayed at his home until late, eventually returning around midnight.

Only then was the trip really over.

Five days instead of four

The trip had started as a four-day plan.

It became five.

Somewhere along the way, reaching places became less important than what happened between them.

The highways got me places.

The village roads gave me the trip.

Perhaps that was the real lesson of these five days.

Go where your heart tells you to go.

You can keep travelling forever and forever.