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 student of the department for aritificial intelligence at the Freie Universitaet Berlin steers a converted Dodge minivan remotely with an iPhone during a demonstration at Tempelhof Airport on November 2, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. The car, whose design was led by professor Raul Rojas, is outfitted with a variety of laser sensors, GPS antennae and computers. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Labourers load a three-wheeled vehicle onto the back of a van at the Mercato market in Addis Ababa October 9, 2015. Addis Ababa's “Mercato” – Italian for “market” – is reputedly the biggest open-air market in Africa, lying in the west of the capital. (Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)

Fireworks explode around the London Eye wheel, the Big Ben clock tower and the Houses of Parliament to mark the beginning of the New Year in London, Britain, January 1, 2016. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

Participants take part in a high-wheel bicycle race in the Frederick county, in Maryland, United States on July 15, 2023. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A picture released by the Italian Carabinieri on 03 July 2014 shows Carabinieri divers inspecting the inside of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, at Giglio Island, Italy, in 2012. The Costa Concordia hit a reef and partly capsized on 13 January 2012, after being steered dangerously close to Giglio, in an alleged stunt by captain Francesco Schettino. Thirty-two of the 4,229 people onboard were killed. (Photo by EPA/Carabinieri Press Office)

Jerome Holcomb of Birmingham, Ala., posses for a photo atop a longhorn steer at the Fort Worth Stockyards Thursday, March 11, 2021, in Fort Worth, Texas. The mask mandate to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been cancelled in Texas. Holcomb said he was tired of wearing a face mask so he came to visit Fort Worth after the Alabama governor extended the mask mandate in his home state. (Photo by L.M. Otero/AP Photo)

Jasmine Entz gets a kiss from her Guinness Book of World Record-breaking 8-year-old Holstein steer called “Beef”, who weighs 2,400 pounds and stands nearly two meters (6 feet) tall, on her ranch in Vulcan County, Alberta, Canada, on Friday, September 26, 2025. (Photo by Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press via AP Photo)