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)

An Indian woman wrapped in a shawl travels with others on a bullock cart on a cold day at Jhansi district, in Bundelkhand, India, Monday, December 29, 2014. Most parts of north India Monday continued to shiver under biting cold with the mercury dipping several notches. (Photo by Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Photo)

Men from the Kenyan Maasai tribe perform a traditional jumping-ritual among fellow members of a common age-set as they observe a rite of passage to mark the transition of an age-set to cultural junior elder from Moran (Maasai for warrior age-set) at a manyatta or traditional homestead built specifically for the ceremony near Lemek town within the Masai-Mara National Reserve ecosystem in Narok county February 27, 2021. (Photo by Tony Karumba/AFP Photo)

Behaviour: Mammals category. Giant Gathering by Tony Wu, USA. Dozens of sperm whales mingled noisily off Sri Lanka’s northeast coast, stacked as far down as Tony could see. This was a congregation of dozens of social units, like a gathering of the clans. Aggregations like this could be a critical part of the whales’ rich social lives but are rarely reported. Some two thirds of the population was wiped out before commercial whaling was banned in 1986. This kind of major gathering could be “a sign that populations are recovering”, says Tony. (Photo by Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017)

American actress Paris Jackson pulls faces at photographers during the “Melbourne Cup” race day festivities in Melbourne, Australia on November 7, 2017. (Photo by Media-Mode/Splash News and Pictures)

A hint of Spring Fever is evidenced by this passerby tipping his hat to a store fixture mannequin on a State St. sidewalk in downtown Chicago on March 23, 1978. The mannequin was awaiting pickup to be transported. (Photo by AP Photo)

Protesting women shout slogans during a demonstration against sexual violence in front of the governor's mansion in San Juan, Puerto Rico on May 3, 2021. The demonstrators denounce the inaction and slowness of the state in implementing the executive order declaring a state of emergency against gender-based violence. (Photo by Ricardo Arduengo/AFP Photo)

One of the largest paddle steamers afloat in Britain is the H.M.S. Royal Eagle, former peacetime excursion boat which carried passengers on pleasure jaunts from Tower Bridge to Southend, Ramscate and Margate. Commissioned two years ago as a warship of the Royal Navy, the craft has been in action 52 times against enemy aircraft. The Eagle took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk where she was dive-bombed 48 times and brought home nearly 3,000 British troops. Members of the crew cleaning the paddle boxes of H.M.S. Royal Eagle in London on January 18, 1943. (Photo by AP Photo)