Phil Keoghan is back at the helm of The Amazing Race for its upcoming seventh season.

The underrated host recently spoke with USA Today about past and future adventures. Here are excerpts:

Q: You're returning for the seventh time to India, which makes it the show's most-visited destination after the USA. What's the appeal?
A: It's my favorite (place for the show). I don't know a more diverse, colorful, dynamic country in the world. There's a sameness and comfort level you get living in a country like America. For people like Nancy and Emily (a first-season mother and daughter team who had a tough time negotiating crowds in New Delhi and Agra), it was like being on another planet.

Q: You're also going back to your birthplace, New Zealand, the adventure capital of the world, for the third time. What new thrills can we expect to see?
A: New Zealanders are very proud of their indigenous Maori culture, and we were looking to get something of that in the show. We ended up having the teams search for Maori warriors on an extinct volcano (near Auckland), and it was the most magical morning when they arrived: As the sun was rising, there were these warriors doing the haka (a traditional war dance) with a magnificent rainbow over the top of the hill.

According to Bertram van Munster, co-creator and executive producer of The Amazing Race the, viewers may need a seat belt when they watch this season, which begins Sunday night.

He told Reality TV World the competition will be kicking the danger level up a few notches during this fall's thirteenth edition.

"[This season] you will see a tricky one where you will wonder 'How in the world did they have the guts to do this?' You are really going to wonder," van Munster said. "I look[ed] at it and I [went] 'Oh what was I thinking? Oh my god, this could go very wrong.'  And then it does."

Overall, the goal was to increase the pressure and the challenges facing contenders.

"What I've done [for this season is] I've come up with so many insane challenges that it should do the trick and I think it will be plenty exciting for an audience to watch it," the producer added.

The 13th season of The Amazing Race debuts on September 28.

As usual, CBS has compiled an assortment of teams, from long-distance dating couple to married beekeepers. Click on the images below to learn a bit more about each squad now:

With the season 13 debut of CBS’ The Amazing Race looming on September 28, executive producer Bertram Van Munster dished on a few clues about the upcoming globe-trotting bonanza to Entertainment Weekly ...

• The race takes 23 days, covers nearly 40,000 miles on five continents, and features some far-flung locales never before seen on the show, including Angkor Wat, Cambodia and La Paz, Bolivia.

• The youngest team is a tandem of guys in their early 20s. “They’re made for television,” Van Munster says. “They’re supersmart — and they make terrible mistakes.” A pair of recent divorcees in their late 20s also vie for the prize. “They were left with some financial debt, so they really have a motive to run around the world,” he says.

• Expect a serving of granola — this time with a husband-wife squad of 60-something Oregon hippies. “They’re the real thing,” says Van Munster. “They come right out of the '60s. To a lot of people, it looks almost like they’re from a different planet.”Continue Reading...

With yet another season of The Amazing Race on the way, host Phil Keoghan recently spoke on the challenges facing the long-running reality series. Here are some of his thoughts on the topic:

On keeping it fresh:
"We're going to new countries, working with new people, and when they get caught up in the enthusiasm of The Amazing Race, it keeps it fresh for all of us. Their enthusiasm reminds us that we're working on something incredibly special. They bring something to it themselves because they're looking at it from a totally different perspective."

On the rigors of production:
"People in the industry know what it's like to get 30 to 40 cameras through customs and signing equipment in and out - every bit down to the smallest microphone has to be documented in and out of countries. They understand that taking one trip to a country is something, but if you're doing it every other day and they have to negotiate in and out of airports every single leg, lights, tripods, microphones, that have to make it. The show has to go on."

T.K. Erwin and Rachel Rosales may have won The Amazing Race. But, as they relayed to The OC Register, the couple couldn't discuss the feat until it was announced on the air...

After dating for a year, T.K. Erwin and Rachel Rosales took off last summer to backpack through Europe for three weeks.

At least that's what they told their parents and friends in Huntington Beach.

But while they did carry backpacks and they did spend a few days in Europe, the scope of their adventure was far greater than the typical twentysomething's traipse around England or France or Spain.

Which left them upon their return with a story that seemed a little shaky, they say.

"It was getting a little suspicious when I came home and had no pictures of where we'd gone," says Erwin, 23, by phone from New York City on Monday.

"And we didn't have the names of places we went or anything," adds Rosales, 24.

Read the full article on the victors now.

As reported earlier, Rachel Rosales and TK Erwin won The Amazing Race 12 last night.

Our friends at BuddyTV sat down with the couple and asked about the victory:

You guys must be feeling pretty good right now, huh?
TK: Yeah, it's a weird...it still doesn't feel real, I can't explain it. I feel like I'm pretending to be on a team that won The Amazing Race.

What's it like watching yourself win a million dollars on TV?
Rachel: It is really surreal. Once it hit it was like yes, this is happening, there it is, we're all done. But we've known that we won for a really long time and we've had to hold it in for so long that I think it still just feels weird that people know.

Read the full interview now.

Rachel Rosales and TK Erwin won The Amazing Race last night. This "newly dating couple," as the show billed them, conquered a pair of other teams to come out on top of the twelfth-season of this competition.

"I can't even believe it... I'm really speechless," TK told host Phil Keoghan after he crossed the finish line with Rachel. "None of this even seems real. It's kind of freaking me out."

Rachel, a 23-year-old florist and business owner, and TK, a 22-year-old substitute teacher were the first team to reach the end in Anchorage, AK. They claimed the $1 million grand prize.

"This whole things was such a crazy roller coaster with so many ups and downs," said TK. "To do it with Rachel, I think our relationship has only grown through this whole thing. And for that, that's more important than any of this for me."

"Father/Daughter" team Ronald and Christina Hsu finished second.

The Amazing Race had an amazing beginning.

Although a lengthy NFL overrun delayed its broadcast by nearly a half-hour, The Amazing Race 12's premiere attracted the show's largest ever debut-episode audience, averaging 13.72 million overall viewers and a 8.3/12 rating/share in households during its broadcast.

The Amazing Race 12 premiered last night.

A few days earlier, host Phil Keoghan spoke with BuddyTV about the adventures of leading the Emmy-winning reality show.

He said his favorite teams are the ones that make for good TV, "not necessary the ones that he'd like to go have a beer with."

At the end of the day, Keoghan realizes this is a TV show, so while he may not love the personalities of some contestants, he's aware the cast requires entertainment value.

Over the course of 12 seasons, the concept of The Amazing Race hasn't changed much - and Keoghan believes it's this consistency that's led to such viewer loyalty.

To read the full interview, click here.