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)

Young female Ibex on the fork of Disteis (2,200 m), near the top of the Jof di Montasio (Friuli, Italy). (Photo by Stefano Zocca)

The Chicago Air & Water Show is an annual air show held on the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois. The show has been held each year since 1959 and is Chicago's second most popular festival. In 2005, 2,200,000 watched the Chicago Air and Water Show.

A Rajasthani man displays his moustache during the closing ceremony of annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan, on November 8, 2022. (Photo by Himanshu Sharma/AFP Photo)

Cambodia’s Meth Sopheaktra and Pal Chhor Raksmy perform in the women's Vovinam self-defense event during the 32nd Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) in Phnom Penh on May 8, 2023. (Photo by Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP Photo)

A baby orangutan called Barney shows off his dancing at Ragunan Zoo in Jakarta, Indonesia in the first decade of November 2023. (Photo by Syahrul Ramadan/Media Drum Images)

A horse trainer takes his horse into the water at Pebble Beach on June 28, 2024 in Bridgetown, Barbados. The swimming horses of Barbados offer a unique and remarkable experience at Pebbles Beach, where racehorses from the nearby Garrison Savannah enjoy their morning swim almost daily between 5:30 am and 7 am. During this ritual, horses swim out surprisingly far to the moored boats before returning to shore, with some staying longer in the water if recovering from injury or soreness after a race. Visitors can observe the horses' individual personalities as they swim and interact with the water, but are advised to respect the guidance of the grooms and maintain a safe distance, as horses can behave unpredictably, especially if frightened. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

A crocodile at a zoo in the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung holds the forearm of a zoo veterinarian in its teeth, April 2007. Surgeons in Taiwan have reattached a vet's arm, after it was bitten off by a crocodile as he tried to give it an anaesthetic injection. His attacker is one of a pair of Nile crocodiles kept at Shoushan zoo. Nile crocodiles are known to be man-eaters, but are also listed as an endangered species. (Photo by Frank Lin/Reuters)