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)

New program of Munich's Krone Circus performed by two American artists “The Carmenas” during a press conference in Munich, Germany on January 10, 1962, while sitting in a coffee-house. (Photo by Heinrich Sanden Sr./AP Photo)

A woman walks past posters bearing the letter “Z” in the colours of the ribbon of Saint George, which has become a symbol of support for Russian military action in Ukraine, and reading “We are proud of Russia! We are not ashamed!” at a bus stop on Nevsky Prospekt in central Saint Petersburg on March 15, 2022. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

Drunk fresher is helped by students as she falls to the ground on night out at during the alcohol-fuelled Freshers’ Week in Birmingham, United Kingdom on September 18, 2017. Freshers are inducted during Freshers' Week – the first week of the Academic year – one of the busiest and most fun weeks of the year. (Photo by Caters News Agency)

Vervet monkeys Higgins, left, and Andor fight playfully atop a car in the Park 'N Fly parking lot which lies adjacent to the swampy mangrove preserve where the monkey colony lives, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Dania Beach, Fla. For 70 years, a group of non-native monkeys has made their home next to a South Florida airport runway, delighting visitors and becoming local celebrities. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

Xochimilco – Island of the Dolls – Dead Line. Photo by Ramalama_22

A murales showing a Swiss guard kissing a colleague, by street artist Laika, is seen on the day of the annual Pride march, in Rome, Saturday, June 26, 2021. This year's march comes amid widespread concern in Europe about legislation in Hungary that will ban showing content about LGBT issues to children and a controversial Vatican communication to Italy, criticizing a law that would extend additional protections from discrimination to the LGBT community. (Photo by Gregorio Borgia/AP Photo)

Igor, a 40 year-old Ukranian soldier embraces his wife in front of his military basement in the center of Odessa on March 17, 2022. Odessa, which Ukraine fears could be the next target of Russia's offensive in the south, is the country's main port and is vital for its economy. But the city of one million people close to the Romanian and Moldovan borders also holds a special place in the Russian imagination. (Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP Photo)