I'd take 11 great legs over 12 mediocre ones.
Not to mention the 11 leg seasons tended to be more creative - 12 had a bunch of random countries while 13 had a bunch of new and challenging tasks in old countries
Going off of that, here's The Amazing Race 30: Keep Hope Alive edition. I did the research and gound that this fits #11legs21days like TAR 12 and 13 without a 'keep racing' leg.
LEG 1 - Los Angeles, CA to Tokyo, Japan
LEG 2 - to Tokyo, JapanSo...this is equal parts #budget and trying to get a good Tokyo leg in (for perspective, the city has been visited 4 times and had 0 good legs welp)
LEG 3 - to Vang Vieng, Laos90% sure this leg exists but still! Bus sides in SE Asia tend to be great (if TAR 1, 2 and 19 aren't enough then TARA 1 <3) and this necessitated a roughly 10 hour one yay
LEG 4 - Ein Gedi, IsraelSo this really could be done anywhere in the Middle East (Al Wafrah in Kuwait <3 Jebel Sands in Oman <3 Petra <3) but this set of countries works with Israel so here we are! NEL bc there are camels
LEG 5 - Eindhoven, NetherlandsTeeeeeeeechnically this is the only Eurpean leg so I see no reason for it not to be somewhere. Let it be the gnome leg assuming we still do these things, given them a car in AMS and let the fun commence
LEG 6 - Ilulissat, Greenland
LEG 7 - Sisimiut, GreenlandI don't know i it's truly possible to make two legs in Greenland but if we can somehow manage two legs in:
- the Botswanan bush
- Swedish/Norwegian Lapland
- (ostensibly two in) Zanzibar
- Sabah in Malaysua
then two in Greenland shouldn't be an issue. The -second- of the two starts with an ~*Intersection*~ and charter helicopters and like...two ARIs followed by a regular Detour, RB,and NEL <3
LEG 8: Mahebourg (but really most of), MauritiusSo this was a fun leg originally in TAR 10 with the teams being routed several thousand miles out of the way just to get there <3 followed by manual drive <3 on the left side <3 aaaaand this leg basically does all of that AND eliminated someone too
LEG 9: Malkerns, SwazilandSo the only way teams are able to fly this route is by waiting 10 hours at JNB but...that's Subsaharan Africa amirite? This ends up a self-drive leg even though it's a small distance because...
LEG 10: Johannesburg, South Africa...they get to DRIVE to Johannesburg which is enough to have a night leg for the first time...ever? Johannesburg is a global city with plenty of history, which means we can treat it like Paris or London or Rome, to say nothing of how those legs actually turned out.
LEG 11: Atlanta, GAAt first this was solely to have the finish line on top of Stone Mountain but that's asking for a lawsuit so...peach's house?
There's plenty of things to do since they did all of three things last time? In my mind there's a clue that sends them to one if the numerous Peachtrees because I'm terrible and, assuming CBS wouldn't mind the competition, a task at CNN. <3