Travel photographer Amos Chapple recently crossed into Turkmenistan on a three-day transit visa and was able to photograph many of the sights and monuments in Ashgabat, the capital and largest city. Turkmenistan is a single-party country, a former Soviet state, run by a president at the center of a cult of personality.

Photo: A young couple leave the Alem Entertainment Center in Ashgabat. The current president has a history of breaking obscure records. In 2012 the wheel atop this complex was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest enclosed Ferris wheel. The structure was built at a cost of $90m. (Photo by Amos Chapple via The Atlantic)

In this Monday, September 22, 2014 photo provided by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, a young cougar is released back into Utah's mountains by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources in an undisclosed site in central Utah. State wildlife officials received reports of the cougar roaming Sunday afternoon in a residential area of the city's eastern flank, a few miles from the base of the Wasatch Mountains. Authorities say cougars generally avoid humans but sometimes enter neighborhoods close to their mountain habitats. (Photo by Steve Gray/AP Photo/Utah Division of Wildlife Resources)

Shoppers wrestle over a television as they compete to purchase retail items on “Black Friday” at an Asda superstore in Wembley, north London November 28, 2014. Britain's high streets, malls and online sites were awash with discounts on Friday as more retailers than ever embraced U.S.-style “Black Friday” promotions, seeking to kickstart trading in the key Christmas period. In the United States the Friday following the Thanksgiving Day holiday is called Black Friday because spending usually surges and indicates the point at which American retailers begin to turn a profit for the year, or go “into the black”. (Photo by Luke MacGregor/Reuters)

Ground personnel work next to the Soyuz TMA-13M capsule of the International Space Station (ISS) crew of Alexander Gerst of Germany, Maxim Suraev of Russia and Reid Wiseman of the U.S. after its landing near the town of Arkalyk in northern Kazakhstan November 10, 2014. A veteran Russian cosmonaut and two International Space Station crewmates, one from the United States and one from Germany, returned safely to Earth on Sunday with a parachute landing of their Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan, ending 5-1/2 months in orbit. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

This undated photograph shows one of the 14 new species of so-called dancing frogs discovered by a team headed by University of Delhi professor Sathyabhama Das Biju in the jungle mountains of southern India. The study listing the new species brings the number of known Indian dancing frogs to 24 and attempts the first near-complete taxonomic sampling of the single-genus family found exclusively in southern India's lush mountain range called the Western Ghats, which stretches 1,600 kilometers (990 miles) from the west state of Maharashtra down to the country's southern tip. (Photo by Satyabhama Das Biju/AP Photo)

Wim Delvoye is a notorious tattoo artist, who became famous when he started tattooing live pigs. He first began in 1997 and after animal rights activists found out about what he was doing, he had to move to China to continue his business. There is nothing special about the tattoos that Wim Delvoye creates, they look mediocre at best, and the only reason why he’s famous is his acts of animal cruelty. Nevertheless, Wim states that the pigs feel just fine and are well fed and taken care off. Full anesthesia is used to ensure that the pig doesn’t feel pain during the course of the whole procedure. During this time three tattoo artists work on the tattoo simultaneously to complete it as quickly as possible. Skins of those pigs are then sold for as much as £50k a piece.

A witch doctor prepares an offering for the inauguration of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Defense of Life, prior to the World Climate Change Conference, in Tiquipaya, Bolivia, October 10, 2015. Almost 150 nations, including major emitters led by China and the United States, have submitted plans to the United Nations for curbing greenhouse gas emissions blamed by the U.N. for causing more floods, droughts and heat waves. France will host the conference in Le Bourget, near Paris, from November 30 to December 11, 2015. (Photo by David Mercado/Reuters)

Demonstrators hold masks depicting Colombian citizen Mile Virginia, who was murdered along with photojournalist Ruben Espinosa and three other women, during a protest in Mexico City, August 16, 2015. Espinosa, a prominent Mexican news photographer was among five people found dead in a middle-class neighborhood of the capital on July 31, 2015. Espinosa, who worked for the weekly magazine Proceso and the photo agency Cuartoscuro, had sought shelter in Mexico City earlier this summer saying he had been followed and threatened in the eastern state of Veracruz. (Photo by Tomas Bravo/Reuters)