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 brown capuchin monkey holds a fruit in the Botanic Garden of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 5, 2013. (Photo by Pablo Porciuncula/AFP Photo)

Young female Ibex on the fork of Disteis (2,200 m), near the top of the Jof di Montasio (Friuli, Italy). (Photo by Stefano Zocca)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

A refugee sits in front of a Greek riot police cordon during a protest at the Greek-Macedonian border, near the Greek village of Idomeni, March 1, 2016. (Photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters)

A climber walks on the ridge beneath the eastern peak of the Gamsberg (2385 meters above sea level) near Grabs, Switzerland, Friday, October 3, 2014. (Photo by Gian Ehrenzeller/AP Photo/Keystone)

Children play football in Bujumbura, Burundi on March 19, 2015. (Photo by Carl de Souza/AFP Photo)

A seafood vendor moves a giant swordfish to his stall at a market in Qingdao, Shandong province, China, September 12, 2015. The 4.1-metre-long (13.5 feet) swordfish, weighed about 309.5 kilograms (682 lbs), was caught by local fishermen on Friday, local media reported. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)