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)

Actress with the Donbass Opera Theatre prepares to perform Eugene Onegin in Donetsk, Ukraine, Saturday, February 7, 2015. For the few dozen spectators that turn up, the weekly performances at the city's opera house serve as a respite from the war raging outside between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces. (Photo by Petr David Josek/AP Photo)

Museum employee Victoria views a giant grouper fish specimen at the Natural History Museum in west London March 25, 2015. It forms part of a new exhibition, “Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea”, featuring a panoramic virtual dive and over 250 specimens from the Museum's coral, fish and marine invertebrate collection, which opens on March 27. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

Men and Women dressed as zombies walk through Hyde Park on February 25, 2012 in Sydney, Australia. The annual Zombie Walk raises money for the Brain Foundation and this year teamed up with FX channel in promotion of “The Walking Dead” series premiering in Australia this weekend. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

Dargavs is a small necropolis outside the village of Dargavs in North Ossetia-Alania. It comprises 99 different tombs and crypts. It is often called city of the dead. Some sources say the oldest of the crypts dates back to the 12th century, though others say the oldest crypt dates back to 14th century and some say it dates to the 16th century. At the back of the complex there is a tower, though the top of it is destroyed.

Commuters by with the buildings of the banking district in background in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, February 6, 2020. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

A fado singer smokes a cigarrette outside a fado house at the Alfama neighborhood in Lisbon on May 8, 2019. From fado sounds to Cape Verde mornas or bossa nova: the Lisbon nights, where musicians from all over the world meet, have largely inspired Madonna's new album, who has been in the Portuguese capital since 2017. (Photo by Patrícia de Melo Moreira/AFP Photo)