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)

With six-inch fangs and weighing in at 600lb, Saber and Janda are no ­ordinary house cats. Yet these huge Bengal tigers live in Janice Haley’s suburban garden and are treated like ordinary pets. They are fed by hand, get strokes and cuddles, and white male Saber goes to sleep sucking on her finger. Janice’s life changed 20 years ago when she spotted an advert for a tiger training course in her local paper – and two years later arrived home with her first cub. Then in 2002 she bought Janda, who is now 12. Photo: The pair are best of friends. (Photo by Ruaridh Connellan/Barcroft Media)

A woman walks protecting herself from rain after Hurricane Matthew in Les Anglais, Haiti, October 13, 2016. (Photo by Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters)

People watch a crocodile with a used motorcycle tyre around its neck on a river in Palu, Central Sulawesi province, Indonesia September 20, 2016 in this picture taken by Antara Foto. Residents suspect the tyre was garbage thrown into the river before it became trapped around the crocodile's neck, reported Antara. (Photo by Mohamad Hamzah/Reuters/Antara Foto)

A vendor prepares paan, a betel nut-based chewable stimulant at a flower market in Kolkata, India, January 18, 2016. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

Underwater photographer of the year 2020 and wide angle category winner: Frozen Mobile Home by Greg Lecoeur (France) in the Antarctic peninsula, Antarctica. Crabeater seals swim around an iceberg. These massive and mysterious habitats are dynamic kingdoms that support marine life. As they swing and rotate slowly through polar currents, icebergs fertilise the oceans by carrying nutrients from land that spark blooms of phytoplankton, fundamental to the carbon cycle. (Photo by Greg Lecoeur/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2020)

A Polish girl and a boy throw water over each other on Wet Monday in Szczecin, northwestern Poland, 13 April 2020. Wet Monday is a Catholic celebration held on Easter Monday mostly in Poland, but also in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and some parts of western Ukraine. Due to the lockdown it is forbidden to celebrate this holiday in public. (Photo by Marcin Bielecki/EPA/EFE)

A woman wearing a face mask and a child sit between rail tracks, during the imposition of large-scale social restrictions by the government to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 12, 2020. (Photo by Willy Kurniawan/Reuters)