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)

Wang Zeyu, 4, a fee-paying enthusiast of kung fu, practises during a training class at a kung fu school near the Shaolin Temple April 10, 2005 in Dengfeng, Henan Province, China. Zeyu's father sent him to the school from his home in Jiangsu Province, thousands kilometres away from Dengfeng, when he was just 3 years old. And his father must pay 9,800 yuan (US$1195) for one year's tuition at the school, a huge amount for most Chinese. There are more than 80 kung fu schools that line the road from the city of Dengfeng to the Shaolin Temple with hundreds and thousands of young kung-fu lovers from all over the country and beyond studying here. All the schools use the Shaolin name to attract students as the Shaolin Temple is the birthplace of Chinese Kung Fu. (Photo by Cancan Chu/Getty Images)

Rougine, a 19-year-old female Arab fighter among the Syrian Democratic Forces, made up of US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters, stands in fatigues embracing another colleague near the village of al-Torshan, 20 km on the outskirts of Raqa on February 6, 2017. (Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP Photo)

A knife is seen beside a bowl containing blood after a ram was killed as a sacrifice in front of a shrine at the annual voodoo festival in Ouidah, Benin, January 10, 2016. In Ouidah, a small town and former slave port in the West African country of Benin, the annual voodoo festival gathers visitors from far and wide. It's a week that brings together priests and dignitaries, rich and poor, locals and visitors from as far afield as the Caribbean and France. The festival commemorates the estimated 60 million people who lost their homelands and their freedom during the African slave trade. (Photo by Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters)

Negin Ekhpulwak, leader of the Zohra orchestra, an ensemble of 35 women, practises on a piano at Afghanistan's National Institute of Music, in Kabul, Afghanistan April 9, 2016. Playing instruments was banned under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and even today, many conservative Muslims frown on most forms of music. Living in an orphanage in the capital, Kabul, 19-year-old Negin Ikhpolwak leads an ensemble of 35 women that plays both Western and Afghan musical instruments. In a country notorious internationally for harsh restrictions on women in most areas of life, Negin's story highlights a double challenge. (Photo by Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

A Bangladeshi girl watches from a nearby building after a five-story building was raided by police in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Tuesday, July 26, 2016. Police in Bangladesh's capital raided a five-story building Tuesday that was used as a den by suspected Islamic militants, killing nine of them, the country's police chief said. Police said they belonged to a Bangladeshi group blamed for an attack on a Dhaka cafe earlier this month in which 20 hostages, mostly foreigners, were killed and had been planning another large-scale assault. (Photo by AP Photo)

Deputies of the opposition fight with deputies of the majority for a second time in two days, during the second session of the newly elected Ukrainian parliament in Kiev on December 13, 2012. (Photo by Sergei Supinsky/AFP Photo)

Most Russians intending to vote for Vladimir Putin in Sunday's election say stability is at the root of their faith in their candidate – though many young voters believe it's time for a change of leader. Putin, 65, is expected to win a fourth term in office with 69 percent of the vote, according to the latest survey by a state-run pollster. Reuters correspondents and photographers who travelled around the country talking to voters ahead of the March 18 election found nothing to contradict expectation of an emphatic Putin victory. (Photo by Anton Vaganov/Reuters)