For the global adventurer who thinks they have seen it all, the New York Times has discovered a challenging new frontier: British politics.

At $5,995 (£4,650) per person, the six-day guided tour called “Brexit means Brexit” is not for the mass market, but offers select groups of American tourists the chance to “examine the historic implications of a historic vote”.

Politicians, journalists and historians will explain what the prime minister might have meant when she declared that Brexit means Brexit, while participants soak up some of London’s febrile political atmosphere along the way.

“After a typical pub lunch and a pint at a local pub frequented by members of parliament, join the queue to attend one of the debates in either the House of Commons or House of Lords,” the marketing literature says.

Quite how baffling Brexit looks to many US liberals was underlined by a recent New York Times investigation headlined “Will London fall?”, which questioned the city’s future as an international hub.

Other guided tours in the same series of travel packages include “Chernobyl, 30 years later” and “Greenland is melting”.

Steven Erlanger, the paper’s London bureau chief, said many Americans were “surprised and even bewildered” by the EU referendum result, but there was “a lot of sympathy, too, I think, from one nation-state to another”, particularly as Donald Trump heralded Brexit as a harbinger of his own victory.

“We covered Brexit very thoroughly as a newspaper. Our readers, American and international, are very interested in the UK, in all its glory to begin with, and also in its future,” said Erlanger, one of several experts who will address the groups this autumn.

“Their interest is political and economic, not just the royals, Harrods, tea and ale. So my hope is to try to explain to people why Britain voted for Brexit and what kind of confusion and complications have already followed, and make some ill-founded guesses about what will finally result.”

In common with many newspapers, the New York Times has branched out with a range of commercial ventures in recent years. Other guided tours in its long-running Times Journeys series attracted critical political attention, such as a trip to Iran in 2014.

News of the upcoming Brexit tours met with a mainly wry response in Britain, where one Twitter user offered to “rant about Brexit at you while we drink pints at the Red Lion for the frankly bargain price of $2,000”.

Others were less amused by what the tour says about the way many foreigners see Westminster.

Denis MacShane, a former Labour Europe minister, whose book on Brexit features on the recommended reading list for New York Times travellers to London, said: “The world is looking with bewilderment at Britain, or maybe England, amputating itself from Europe.

“Americans have been taught that from Queen Elizabeth I to Winston Churchill, England had to be present in Europe and never allow Europe to decide the continent’s destiny without British involvement.

“Now they can see history in the making as the Tories, Labour and Ukip all embrace Brexit and say adieu to Europe.”

Other books suggested as preparatory reading by tour organisers include Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, described as “a laugh out loud account of a man-powered voyage along the river Thames”.