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 sadhu, or a Hindu holy man, blesses a devotee as he smokes marijuana at a transit camp on the way to Gangasagar, in Kolkata, India, Sunday, January 7, 2018. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims are expected to take the annual holy dip at Gangasagar, where the Ganges River reaches the Bay of Bengal, on the auspicious Makar Sankranti festival day that falls on Jan. 14. (Photo by Bikas Das/AP Photo)

Villagers from Jiexi Jiantan village perform a ritual of “Zha Laoye”, or “Cracking local spirits”, in Chaoshan, Guangdong Province, China, 10 February 2019. Jiexi Jiantan Village celebrates the annual custom of “Zha Laoye” where Laoye are local spirits. Every third day of the lunar New Year, statues of local spirits known as the “Thousand-mile Eye” Laoye and “Ear Following the Wind” Laoye are brought out to the village committee to receive incensed tea offered by believers. (Photo by EPA/EFE/ZNSEN)

In this photo taken on Sunday, March 10, 2019, a little girl laughs during a ritual marking the upcoming Clean Monday, the beginning of the Great Lent, 40 days ahead of Orthodox Easter, on the hills surrounding the village of Poplaca, in central Romania's Transylvania region. Romanian villagers burn piles of used tires then spin them in the Transylvanian hills in a ritual they believe will ward off evil spirits as they begin a period of 40 days of abstention, when Orthodox Christians cut out meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

A man carries his dog as he prays during Vesak Day, an annual celebration of Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death, at Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon temple in Ayutthaya, Thailand, May 10, 2017. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

A street food vendor waits for customers on a footpath in New Delhi, India, November 27, 2018. (Photo by Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters)

Men tackle a bull as they participate in the annual bull-taming sport of Jallikattu played to celebrate the harvest festival of Pongal on January 15, 2023 in Avaniyapuram, near Madurai, India. (Photo by Abhishek Chinnappa/Getty Images)

In this photograph taken on August 9, 2023, children make their way along a street during heavy downpour in Kilinochchi. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP Photo)