Fireworks explode over Elizabeth Tower housing the Big Ben clock in London. (Photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press)

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)

A child looks up to his partner as she stands above the crowd with the support of an elaborate rig of hidden metal rods, during the Bun Festival parade at Cheung Chau island in Hong Kong on May 22, 2018. Thousands of local residents and tourists flocked to an outlying island in Hong Kong to celebrate a local bun festival on Tuesday despite the recording-breaking heat. (Photo by Bobby Yip/Reuters)

A raccoon scratches herself on the window sill of the Paige Donnelly Law Firm on the 23rd floor of the UBS Plaza building in St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S., June 12, 2018, in this image obtained from social media. (Photo by Evan Frost/MPR News via Reuters)

Migrants with a stick, stones and knife fight with each other after a brawl erupted over a place in an overcrowded train heading to the Serbian border at the train station in Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 14 August 2015. (Photo by Georgi Licovski/EPA/EFE)

Bollywood actress Sushmita Sen walks the ramp to showcase the creation of designer Sunita Shanker during Lakme fashion week winter 2018 in Mumbai, India, Thursday, August 23, 2018. (Photo by Rajanish Kakade/AP Photo)

An air raid drill at Seattle College caught students William Bates, left, and Edna Mae Farrell, right, while they were eating their lunch in the school café, but they simply took shelter under the table and continued eating in Seattle, Washington, March 17, 1942. Air raid wardens said 350 students left their classrooms and assembled in shelters within one minute in first at the college. (Photo by AP Photo)

U.S. first lady Melania Trump steps out of her motorcade vehicle as she departs Washington for a tour of several African countries from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., October 1, 2018. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)