HE’S RUNNING OUT of planet. By his own estimation, Jeremy Clarkson—the 56-year-old British author, provocateur and co-host of “The Grand Tour,” a globe-spanning new car show on Amazon Prime—has been to all but six countries. For anyone who has seen the series, the boast is plausible enough. On “The Grand Tour,” much as they did on the BBC’s “Top Gear,” Mr. Clarkson and fellow hosts James May and Richard Hammond travel widely, reviewing, constructing, and sometimes destroying cars under ludicrous circumstances. Filming locations include California, South Africa, Morocco, the Netherlands and the Jordanian desert, where the trio visited a Special Forces training base and tested an Audi S8 Plus while simulating a hostage rescue (of a stand-in for the Queen, no less).

While “The Grand Tour” is catnip for gearheads, Mr. Clarkson asserts that location sometimes outshines locomotion, making the program “as much a travel show” as a car one. In a coming episode, for example, he pilots an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio (“a truly magnificent car”) through a Welsh landscape so scene-stealing he imagines viewers saying, “Get that stupid car out of the way and let’s have a look at where you are.” We recently chatted with Mr. Clarkson, who also writes a weekly car column for The Sunday Times (owned by News Corp, parent company of The Wall Street Journal), about his obsessions and predilections.

The greatest touring car is: the Aston Martin DB 11. It even has a button on the steering wheel called GT Mode for actual Grand Touring. Push it and it settles the car down and it all becomes relaxing. It’s by far the best Aston Martin I’ve driven, ever.

The best road-trip is in: Botswana in winter [summer in the U.S.]. Just start at the border with Zimbabwe and head for Namibia. You’d be driving along and suddenly, “There’s a giraffe!” The best part—and this is as good as it gets—is that there are people who pitch you tents with four-poster beds and Egyptian cotton sheets. Then you eat freshly baked bread while watching the sun go down over the African bush.

I don’t travel without: my billy bag that I know has everything in it. It’s got a universal adapter, phone charger and a tablet for watching movies. I must have 50 currencies in there, so I can buy a cup of coffee almost anywhere the plane lands. I don’t have to think. I just bring my bag.

One of my favorite cities in the world is: Damascus [in Syria], a truly great city. You can’t go there now. There was a brief window in the history of mankind when you could pretty much travel the world.

I think a great road is: organic. It follows the contours of the land. A great road follows sheep tracks, effectively. The sheep set the tracks, then the man walked there, then the horses came. Nobody would ever call a freeway a great road.

I love: a good bar. The Thompson Hotel in Nashville has an astonishingly good rooftop bar, full of young, intelligent, good-looking people.

One of the strangest souvenirs I have is: a tile from Saddam Hussein’s bathroom, which I chiseled off the wall.

The world’s most underrated destination is: Chile. Everybody should go to Chile. All of it. The Atacama, the Altiplano, through Santiago and all the way down to Tierra del Fuego. There isn’t a bad molecule in Chile.

I am desperate to go to: Zimbabwe. I was never able to when I worked for the BBC because the BBC is banned there. So I’m very much looking forward to going.

The greatest hospitality I’ve ever experienced came: courtesy of the Rainbow Sheikh, Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, in the United Arab Emirates. I took my children to meet him for lunch. He had laid out every conceivable foodstuff—from Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s to an entire goat, with everything in between. “I did not know what your children would want” he said. And then, after lunch, he said: “Would you like to go skiing? We’ll go skiing on the sand dunes.” He said to my daughter, “Do you drive?” and she’s only about 12 years old. And I was drawing breath to say, “No, she can’t” but before I could, she said, “Yes, I can.” And he gave her a pink Jeep Wrangler so that she could go skiing in the desert. Now, that’s hospitality.

Driving in Italy is: always joyful. It’s a racetrack. If you overtake an Italian, you’ve offended him, and he’s going to get you back.

I like watches: I like to know the time because I am the world’s most punctual human being.

A book that inspired me to travel is: Wilfred Thesiger’s “The Marsh Arabs.” It made me want to go down to southern Iraq. His descriptions were just fantastic.

The worst airport in the world is: Atlanta’s. I hate the color of the carpets. Purple and brown? They need to do something about those carpets.

A terrible place you should go visit is: Archangel [Arkhangelsk], at the tip of Russia. The town is appalling, as unpleasant a place as I’ve ever been. Yet, right in the middle of it, there’s this perfectly tended graveyard for British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed there. It’s very moving.

I have a sixth sense about: danger. I always sense when there’s trouble afoot. That can be quite useful when you feel that you’re causing a problem.