A worker walks through a salt pan on the eve of May Day or Labour Day on the outskirts of the southern Indian city of Chennai April 30, 2014. India is the third largest salt producing country in the world after China and U.S. with global annual production about 230 million tonnes, according to government data. (Photo by Reuters/Babu)

An athlete pulls a 15-tonne truck during a Truck-Pull event marking the upcoming Independence Day in the Belarus capital Minsk, on July 3, 2014. The former Soviet nation celebrates its Independence Day on July 3 in memory of the end of Belarus occupation by Nazi Germany troops during the Red Army main summer offensive in 1944. (Photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP Photo)

In this third of seven sequential photos, Elian Gonzalez is held in a closet by Donato Dalrymple, one of the two men who rescued the boy from the ocean, right, as government officials search the home of Lazaro Gonzalez for the young boy, early morning, April 22, 2000, in Miami, Florida. Armed federal agents seized Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives before dawn, firing tear gas into an angry crowd as they left the scene with the weeping 6-year-old boy. This photo won the Prize in 2001. (Photo by Alan Diaz/AP Photo)

In this September 19, 2014 photo, explosives are detonate by Peruvian counternarcotics forces on a part of a clandestine grassy airstrip in the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro River Valleys, or VRAEM, the world's No. 1 coca-growing region, in Ayacucho, Peru. The dynamiting of craters by Peruvian security forces into clandestine airstrips cuts into profits but hardly discourages cocaine traffickers who net tens of thousands of dollars with each flight flown from these airstrips. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

This long exposure picture shows vehicles on roads during rush hour on the eve of the National Day holidays in Shanghai on September 30, 2014. According to local media, police checkpoints will be set up at highways, elevated roads and business hubs to tackle drunk driving during the National Day holiday. (Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP Photo)

North Korean soldiers wave along the Yalu River, near the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite to the Chinese border city of Dandong October 7, 2014. (Photo by Jacky Chen/Reuters)

A Brazilian drug gang member nicknamed Pilintra, 26, poses with a gun atop a hill overlooking a slum in Salvador, Bahia State, April 11, 2013. One of Brazil's main tourist destinations and a 2014 World Cup host city, Salvador suffers from an unprecedented wave of violence with an increase of over 250% in the murder rate, according to the Brazilian Center for Latin American Studies (CEBELA). (Photo by Lunae Parracho/Reuters)

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)