France's Simon Billy gets ready to practice speed skiing on the Chabriere ski slope in Vars, on March 29, 2017. (Photo by Jean-Pierre Clatot/AFP Photo)

Gong Yan of Team China flies out of the gate at the Para Alpine Skiing Men's Super Combined Super-G Standing at Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Centre during day three of the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics on March 07, 2022 in Yanqing, China. (Photo by Joel Marklund for OIS/PA Wire)

The Swiss Air Force Patrouille Suisse aerobatic team performs during the men's downhill race at the Alpine Skiing FIS Ski World Cup in Wengen, Switzerland, Saturday, January 19, 2019. (Photo by Anthony Anex/Keystone via AP Photo)

Retired Malam Jabba engineer Akbar Ali skis down the piste at the ski resort in Malam Jabba, Pakistan February 7, 2017. Atop the piste of Malam Jabba in Pakistan's once dangerous Swat Valley skiers schuss downhill, a new Chinese-built chairlift ferries tourists to the peak, and a luxury hotel is under construction to replace one torched by the Taliban. (Photo by Caren Firouz/Reuters)

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 person practices ski-joering at the Avoriaz resort in the French Alps on February 11, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Pachoud/AFP Photo)

A policer officer hits a man with a baton as he tries to maintain order while migrants wait for trains at a temporary camp near Gevgelija, Macedonia, September 7, 2015. Several thousand migrants in Macedonia boarded trains on Sunday to travel north after spending a night in a provisional camp. Macedonia has organised trains twice a day to the north border where migrants cross into Serbia to make their way to Hungary. Since June, Macedonian authorities have said that more than 60,000 migrants have entered the country, and around 1,500 entered just in one day, mainly refugees from Syria. (Photo by Stoyan Nenov/Reuters)

In this photo taken on Sunday, February 15, 2015 a girl runs away from a “Mamuxarro” during the carnival, in the small town of Unanu, northern Spain. In the northern Spanish ancient village of Unamu, people dress up as “Mamuxarro”, folkloric figures in white with a red sash and a metal mask to cover their faces as they pursue townsfolk with sticks. According to custom, their “victims” (usually young women) must kneel and kiss the mamuxarro’s knee after he makes the sign of the cross on their forehead. (Photo by Alvaro Barrientos/AP Photo)