This aerial picture taken on the night of November 12, 2018 shows traffic on an elevated intersection in downtown Shanghai, China. (Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP Photo)

A yellow-billed oxpecker stands on a giraffe in the Masai Mara National Park, Kenya on September 3, 2022. (Photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters)

A farmer harvests the lotus roots at a lotus pond in the Lingjiaohu Village of Nanxian County, Yiyang City, Central China's Hunan Province on April 26, 2023. Farmers in Lingjiaohu Village of Nanxian County have recently been busy with harvesting lotus roots. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

French performer Odile De Mainville applies a makeup backstage before the Parisian transvestite cabaret show at “Madame Arthur” in Paris, on September 29, 2023. Open since 1946, Madame Arthur is the oldest transformist cabaret in Paris. Threatened with extinction the cabaret is undergoing a renaissance, attracting younger customers by returning to the fundamentals of the lie: baroque and queer performers who play with genres and conventions, and sing French hits live. (Photo by Joel Saget/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)

A picture made available 26 April 2016 shows a tiger playing in the water with a trainer nicknamed “Super Tiger Man” at the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province, Thailand, 24 April 2016. The site known in Thai as “Wat Pa Luangta Maha Bua Yannasampanno” has been the focus of a dispute with the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) after the DNP asked in 2015 that the temple hands over its 147 tigers since it was not licensed to keep them. The temple has requested for a zoo license according to its managing director. (Photo by Diego Azubel/EPA)

A tourist poses on the glass-bottom bridge at Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon on August 20, 2016 in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province of China. The Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon's glass-bottomed bridge welcame its trial operation on Saturday and about 8,000 tourists crowded to view the grand glass bridge. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

A ballet dancer stretches backstage during Nacho Duato's “The Nutcracker” at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia November 21, 2015. For theatregoers in St Petersburg, Nacho Duato's “The Nutcracker” demonstrates the global appeal of a Christmas classic. When the curtain rises at the Mikhailovsky Theatre, among the oldest opera and ballet houses in Russia, it's the culmination of hundreds of hours of toil and sweat by dancers, costume makers, set designers and musicians playing the famous score by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. (Photo by Grigory Dukor/Reuters)