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)

Animals destined for the stage of Radio City Music Hall in New York on November 13, 1986 are led to the stage door by their co-stars, the Rockettes dancers. A variety of animals, including camels, sheep and donkeys, will star in an annual Christmas production. (Photo by G. Paul Burnett/AP Photo)

This computer image provided Monday March 17, 2014 by the Press Office of socialist candidate to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, shows a tunnel of abandoned railway from the 19th century, now ramshackle and overgrown, turned into a cinema. Hidalgo’s plan envisions not just a green space but in the tunnels, places for farming fish and mushrooms. (Photo by AP Photo/Anne Hidalgo's Press Office)

People walk on the street in Samara, Russia on July 18, 2017. (Photo by David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters)

A man looks at a mural painted on the walls of houses in Zaraeeb, created by French-Tunisian artist El Seed, in the shanty area known also as Zabaleen or “Garbage City” on the Mokattam Hills in eastern Cairo, Egypt, April 4, 2016. (Photo by Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

Singer Jason Derulo performs during his Flash Mob with Knicks City Dancers outside of Madison Square Garden on September 28, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

Girls look at a newly installed “Renew” media point in the City of London on January 26, 2012 in London, England. The “pods” will transmit each market day and will include breaking news, weather and travel information, and information about sport, fashion, the arts and entertainment. The stations which will also double as recycling points are run by media company Renew. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)