Ice Hotel, Sweden • 2017 • episode "S1E6" • Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby

47:23

In Dagestan - which the Foreign Office warns against visiting - Levison experiences warrior clans' hospitality, stunning beauty and ancient cities. Then it's on to country-of-contrasts Azerbaijan.

S1E2 • From Russia to Iran: Crossing the Wild Frontier with Levison Wood • 2017 • Travel

58:57

On an epic railway journey from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh to Kolkata in West Bengal, Michael Portillo uses his Bradshaw's 1913 Handbook of Indian, Foreign and Colonial Travel, published when the British Raj was 55 years old, to chart a course through India's history from the days of The East India Company to the dawn of independence. In Lucknow, Michael tastes the famous local kebabs before seeking the truth about 1857 Siege of Lucknow, a key moment in the rebellion which precipitated the end of the East India Company's grip on India and the start of direct British rule.

S1E4 • Great Indian Railway Journeys • 2018 • Travel

45:03

A hundred miles south of Cairo a stretch of the Nile was once considered Egypt's main highway, used by Cleopatra to travel the country. More than 2,000 years after her, Bettany visits a vast desert catacomb where tens of thousands of mummified animals were once left as an offering. Further upstream, there is a chance to swim in the Nile, and look inside the tombs where Tutankhamen's discoverer, Howard Carter, first got hooked on Egypt. Bettany explores the longest tomb yet found, before heading to the Dendera temple, where Cleopatra herself may have once wowed her lover Julius Caesar.

S1E2 • The Nile: Egypt's Great River with Bettany Hughes • 2019 • Travel

46:21

Joanna's adventures in and around Iran, from where she followed the Silk Road through Azerbaijan and Georgia, finally moving on to Venice. Also presents behind the scenes footage from Joanna's travels in Haiti and Cuba.

S1E3 • Joanna Lumley’s Unseen Adventures • 2020 • Travel

59:15

The third leg takes him from the illegally annexed peninsula of Crimea to the historic Baltic city of St Petersburg. Crimea is part of neighbouring Ukraine but was annexed by Russia in 2014. President Putin's government is investing heavily in the illegally occupied territory - building a huge bridge linking Crimea to Russia. Simon meets the eccentric and fearless owner of a safari park who likes to get up close and personal with his pride of lions. The owner is struggling to get water to his park after a canal that supplied much of Crimea's water was shut off by the Ukraine. And it is not just the lions that are affected - the diminishing water supplies are now beginning to threaten a humanitarian crisis.

S1E3 • Russia with Simon Reeve • 2017 • Travel

47:06

The Banat region borders on Serbia and Hungary, so its capital, Timisoara, is a very multi-cultural, cosmopolitan city, and provides the main social and economic hub for western Romania.

S1E7 • Flavours of Romania • 2018 • Travel