There are virtually no motorable roads in many parts of the three districts of Belgaum, Bagalkot and Bellary that you must cross to reach the sites; the overnight stays in local hotels range from the crummy to below-average for the prices they charge; the food on offer is often a messy pan-Indian sludge rather than simple, delicious, hygienically prepared regional cuisine that visitors might enjoy; and the public pay-toilets, run by local authorities, are cesspools of unspeakable squalor.
Two of the five destinations - the monumental ninth-century temple complex at Pattadakal and the magnificent 15th-century city of Vijayanagara at Hampi - are World Heritage Sites, superbly situated in landscapes of rivers, lush agriculture and natural outcrops of gigantic boulders. A British architectural historian once described the sixth-century cave temples at Badami, hewn from sandstone the colour of badam (almond), as one of the great marvels of ancient engineering. Art historians down the ages have extolled their beauty as the finest examples of period stone sculpture. Yet not many people go there - not as many as should go.
The obvious route to link the sites would be via an efficient road and rail network from Goa, thereby tapping some of the four million tourists who flock to the coastal state each year. This would also be an improvement on the longer journey from the south via Hospet, a town so ugly and comfortless it should be nicknamed "Inhospitable".
The Goa-Badami-Pattadakal distance, crossing the Western Ghats, is only about 300 kilometres. However, Jayanthi Natarajan stopped the expansion of the highway as environment minister after contracts had been awarded. Beyond Belgaum, somewhere at Ram Durg, the road simply dissolved into a dusty village track. This is fertile farming country: the sugarcane harvest was in full swing and trolleys laden with the crop edged other traffic out. It took us 12 hours, risking life and limb, to cover 300 km in a tourist coach.
Visiting Hampi after a decade, some pleasant surprises were in store. The Archaeological Survey of India and the Karnataka government were forced to respond to Unesco's threat some years ago of stripping its World Heritage Site status if encroachments around monuments and bridges across the Tungabhadra were not stopped. As a result, the 43 square kilometre area strewn with temples, palaces and fortifications is well maintained: gardens have been laid out, riverside bazaars removed, a proper museum is in place, excavations continue apace and patrol guards are installed at all monuments.
Academic and private initiatives have also yielded results, notably in the example of the Anglo-American archaeologists George Michell and John M Fritz, who have spent years mapping and monitoring the site and produced an excellent, inexpensive guidebook. Another dynamic vigilante effort is led by Shama Pawar, whose NGO is a successful development model in improving schools, sanitation, old buildings and crafts of Anegondi, a cluster of villages north of the river. Her impassioned quest for preservation includes a tranquil eco-friendly tourist lodge and an annual festival of classical music and dance against temple backdrops. Thousands thronged to the performances over Republic Day weekend.
Governments, however, lack the zeal in planning and upgrading the basic infrastructure of roads and transportation to scale up the tourist economy. An example of how the magnificent can be made to look mundane are the promotional shorts on Pattadakal and Hampi on Incredible India's website - the drab cinematography, Bollywood-style fusion tracks, wordy scripts and long recitatives by ingenue anchors are direct descendants from Films Division documentaries.
When tourism ministry officials speak of creating exciting new tourism circuits, they could as likely be talking of how to short-circuit tourism. What they carefully omit mentioning is how tourists will get to those places.