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)

Michelle Rodriguez attends the De Grisogono Party during the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival at on May 15, 2018 in Antibes, France. (Photo by INSTARimages.com)

“The white tiger is a recessive mutant of the Bengal tiger, which was reported in the wild from time to time in Assam, Bengal, Bihar and especially from the former State of Rewa”. – Wikipedia. (Photo by Tambako The Jaguar)

Period-costumed actors participate in the 150th anniversary re-enactment of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Museum of Confederacy in Appomattox, Virginia, April 9, 2015. (Photo by Jay Paul/Reuters)

Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Police Officer Keith Flood trains with his K-9 partner Doc, a German Shepherd, inside the “warehouse room” at the new MTA Police Department Canine Training Center in Stormville, New York, U.S., June 6, 2016. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters)

Migrants ride on top of a northern bound train toward the US-Mexico border in Juchitan, southern Mexico, Monday, April 29, 2013. Migrants crossing Mexico to get to the U.S. have increasingly become targets of criminal gangs who kidnap them to obtain ransom money. (Photo by Eduardo Verdugo/AP Photo)

Claire and Rupert Callender of the Green Funeral Company pose for a photograph with a environmentally friendly coffin in woodland close to their office at Dartington Hall Estate on February 4, 2011 near Torquay, England. The Devon-based company operates as funeral directors and undertakers throughout the South West, offers an ecological alternative to traditional funerals, with coffins made from ecologically friendly materials such as wicker and bamboo, and can arrange funerals that encompass diverse religious and spiritual beliefs everything from a Catholic Requiem Mass, to a Pagan ritual at a stone circle on Bodmin Moor. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

A three-seater Toyota Kikai concept car is displayed during the 2016 CES trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada January 8, 2016. (Photo by Steve Marcus/Reuters)