Snow blows off the Svalbard Global Seed Vault before being inaugurated at sunrise, Tuesday, February 26, 2008. (Photo by John McConnico/AP Photo)

Students brave high winds and rain on Blackpool promenade as Britain prepares for high winds over the next two days on October 20, 2014 in Blackpool, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Cara Delevingne and Kate Moss attend the Burberry Prorsum show during London Fashion Week Spring Summer 2015 on September 15, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images)

NASA's DHC-3 Otter plane flies in Operation IceBridge-Alaska surveys of mountain glaciers in Alaska in this image released on September 18, 2014. Over the past few decades, average global temperatures have been on the rise, and this warming is happening two to three times faster in the Arctic. (Photo by Chris Larsen/Reuters/NASA/University of Alaska-Fairbanks)

Construction workers carry bricks on their heads near the country's parliament building in Naypyitaw November 11, 2014. Yangon lost its status as Myanmar's capital in 2005, after the former military junta carved a new seat of government from a parched wilderness some 380 km (236 miles) to the north and called it Naypyitaw (“Abode of Kings”). (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A mahout (elephant driver) walks a baby elephant across the city streets at night September 27, 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Elephants munch on Christmas trees in their enclosure at Berlin's Zoologischer Garten Zoo on January 4, 2013 in Berlin, Germany. Traditionally, the animals get in the first week of the year leftover Christmas trees. (Photo by Andreas Rentz)

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)