A member of a Thai buffalo racing team tries to control it before a sprint race during an annual buffalo racing festival in Chonburi, Thailand, Monday, October 6, 2025. (Photo by Sakchai Lalit/AP Photo)

A member of the Boi Bumba Garantido association performs during the Boi Bumba folklore festival at the Bumbodromo in Parintins, Amazonas State, Brazil, on June 28, 2024. Parintins is well-known internationally for its Boi Bumba folklore festival, which lasts for three days in late June and whose themes, costumes, and songs are based on indigenous cultures of the Amazon rainforest. (Photo by Michael Dantas/AFP Photo)

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)

Riot police clash with demonstrators protesting against proposed pension reforms outside the Congress in Buenos Aires on December 18, 2017. Protesters angry at proposed pension and welfare reforms attacked police close to Argentina's congress building in Buenos Aires on Monday, the second protest in a week to turn violent. Activists lobbed stones, bottles and firecrackers at police as huge crowds demonstrated against pension reforms proposed by the center-right government of President Mauricio Macri. (Photo by Eitan Abramovich/AFP Photo)

A Hindu devotee offers prayers at the Sangam, the confluence of three rivers – the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati, to take a ritualistic bath during Makar Sankranti festival that falls during the annual traditional fair of Magh Mela festival, one of the most sacred pilgrimages in Hinduism, in Prayagraj, India. Friday, January 14, 2022. (Photo by Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Photo)

Sümi women gesture as they line up to perform a traditional Sümi rice pounding folk song called “Thishole” during Western Sumi Torimi Hoho Silver Jubilee at Thilixü Village in Chumoukedima district, India north eastern state of Nagaland on June 7, 2023. Altogether 1400 Sülimis perform their traditional rice pounding folk song to mark their 25th Anniversary. (Photo by Caisii Mao/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

This photo provided by Joan Marcus on August 28, 2015 shows ballerina Misty Copeland in the musical “On the Town” at the Lyric Theatre in New York. Until September 6, 2015 Copeland will play Miss Turnstiles, a love interest for one of three sailors enjoying a few hours of shore leave in 1940s New York. (Photo by Joan Marcus via AP Photo)

Children dressed as chess pieces perform during an event organised ahead of the 44th Chess Olympiad 2022, in Chennai on July 26, 2022. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)