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 not to stay on the main road.

There was a smaller alternative.

I took it.

That decision produced one of my favourite scenes of the entire trip.

After riding through coffee estates and winding rural roads, I suddenly saw a small paddy field.

That caught my attention because paddy means something quite specific to me. I’m used to the enormous paddy landscapes around my native Thanjavur.

This wasn’t like that.

It was small, perhaps grown mainly for local needs.

But at around eight in the morning it was a brilliant green, with mountains rising behind it.

Above the field, perhaps a kite, hovered and hunted for food.

I stopped the motorcycle and took a video.

On the highway I would probably never have seen it.

Or even if I had, I couldn’t simply have stopped and watched.

The morning continued like that.

As the villages woke up, ordinary life began appearing around me.

Children were going to school in autorickshaws and on two-wheelers. Others waited for buses.

At one point there was a man riding a horse along the main road.

Later, down towards the warmer country near the Hemavathi, I noticed a woman simply going about her morning in a nightgown.

The contrast made me laugh.

Here I was dressed in motorcycle jacket, gloves, balaclava and helmet, equipped as though I were undertaking some enormous expedition.

She was simply getting on with her day.

And somewhere during that ride I understood something.

Touring is different from living.

There are probably beautiful roads near places where I normally live. There certainly are around London. But when you’re commuting or dealing with ordinary life, you often don’t really see them.

Your mind is somewhere else.

Here, my senses were deliberately looking for things.

I wasn’t thinking about finances.

I wasn’t thinking about home.

I wasn’t thinking about career worries.

I wasn’t even particularly interested in reaching the destination.

I was looking at fields, people, roads and mountains. I was thinking about the next bend, the right gear and how the motorcycle felt beneath me.

For a few hours, that was enough.

By the end of the day I had another feeling too: confidence.

This journey had been undertaken largely on faith that it would work.

Now I knew it could.

I could tour like this again. I could change the route. I could take a detour. I could go almost anywhere, provided I kept a few sensible limits—perhaps 120 kilometres in a day, two or three hours of serious riding, plenty of stops, no need to rush.

The world of possible trips had suddenly become much larger.