If you leavened the boredom of last year’s lockdowns with chilling polar exploration drama The Terror, this year you can see the doomed 1845 expedition’s spectacular frozen setting – but with far less tragic results. Tracing Sir John Franklin’s route through the Canadian High Arctic with Quark Expeditions, there’s no chance your PC6 Polar Class ship will get marooned in the ice like HMS Erebus and Terror. Deluxe, all-suite icebreaker Ultramarine sails with twin helicopters and a fleet of Zodiacs, and you’ll navigate up the western edge of Baffin Bay meeting Inuit communities and spotting calving glaciers and bowhead whales. On Beechey Island, you’ll see the graves of three of Sir John’s crew members, and hear the full story of the lost ships from the on-board historian.

Quark Expeditions’ 17-day Northwest Passage: In the Footsteps of Franklin departs 1 August, 2022 and starts from £11,700

A visit to the Palace of Versailles is a window into one of history’s most excessive lifestyles. Now you can experience the extravagance yourself, at Airelles Château de Versailles, Le Grand Contrôle. The first hotel to open within the Versailles grounds houses 14 opulent suites decorated in impeccable 1788 style. Guests receive exclusive access to Versailles, so you can tour The Trianon, boat on the Grand Canal and wander through the Hall of Mirrors without members of the public spoiling your regal illusions. For complete immersion, the hotel offers a day in the life of Marie Antoinette, with a costume fitting, spa treaments inspired by the last Queen of France’s own beauty regimen, and a private dinner accompanied by a string quartet in the royal apartments. The hotel’s cuisine is by Mr Alain Ducasse, so your macaron-tasting session is a matter of “let them eat Michelin-starred cake”.

Rates start from €1,700 per night

As the modern world increasingly tramples on indigenous communities and ancient traditions falter in the face of globalisation, Papua New Guinea remains resolutely in touch with its past. On this Pacific island, tribal identity is everything, and with its population of nine million speaking at least 800 different languages, there’s huge diversity. Visit during the annual Goroka Show and you’ll see tribal traditions stretching back millennia. The ritual music and dancing, and striking, elaborate costumes – think towering wigs decorated with feathers and moss, or balefully glaring mud masks – are not a show put on for tourists. “It’s a means of keeping cultural identities alive,” says Mr Jonathan Morris of travel specialists Reef & Rainforest. “Happily, everyone loves having their photos taken.”

Reef & Rainforest’s 15-day Goroka Show itinerary departs 12 August, 2022 and starts from £4,995

Some of the world’s best-preserved fossils have been found among the red rocks and arid dunes of the Gobi desert, which during the Cretaceous period was covered with dense conifer forest. Travel there on a tour organised by New Scientist and you’ll not only visit the areas where famous finds – including a fossilised velociraptor mid-fight with a protoceratops – were unearthed, but also get to dig for your own. You’ll accompany experts from the Mongolian Institute of Palaeontology and help with their field work, perhaps discovering your own piece of dinosaur history, 80 million years in the making.

Steppes Travel’s 15-day Palaeontology in the Gobi Desert with New Scientist departs 27 August, 2022 and starts from £6,495

The critically acclaimed Chernobyl miniseries brought to horrifying life the fallout of the 1986 nuclear disaster. With radiation waning, it’s now safe to visit, and you’ll be struck by both the scale of the catastrophe and nature’s indefatigable powers of recovery. Adventure tour outfit Explore organises short breaks exploring within the exclusion zone, visiting the town of Pripyat, the Red Forest and the “New Safe Confinement” structure shell around Reactor 4. You’ll also meet a “self-settler” in their home – one of the few who chose to return after the explosion and who has lived there ever since. A handful of special departures even include a tour within the power station itself, where you’ll watch workers decommissioning the plant.

Explore offers a four-night trip including a reactor visit from £930, with a range of departures throughout 2022 and 2023

The perennial success of period dramas shows we cannot get enough of the British nobility. Enter their elite world on an exclusive tour designed and led by travel pioneer Mr Geoffrey Kent, who brings his aristocratic connections to bear so you’ll be waved into usually private sections of Windsor Castle, race a BMW around Goodwood Motor Circuit and learn polo at Cowdray House. In Scotland, you’ll stay as a personal guest of His Grace the Duke of Roxburghe and he’ll organise countryside pastimes such as fly-fishing and clay pigeon shooting, so you can truly feel like a turn-of-the-century toff.

Abercrombie & Kent’s nine-day Royal and Ducal Castles trip departs 1 May, 2022 and starts from £101,500

Some of cinema’s greatest fight scenes have been inspired by Japan’s ancient warrior class, the samurai. But with the use of katana – the curving, polished handmade swords made from layers of special steel – banned after WWII, the ancient sword-smithing skills that date back to the 10th century have become increasingly rare. Travel specialists InsideJapan can take you behind the scenes at the workshop of one of the few sword-masters left in Japan, Fusahiro Shimojima sensei. You’ll hear about the history and philosophy of sword making, watch the expert at work and even have a try at forging the Tamahagane steel yourself.

InsideJapan can organise a sword-master experience as part of a tailor-made holiday in Japan