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)

An animal rights activist washes herself with red dye to mimic blood during a protest against the testing of shampoo on animals in Barcelona. April 24, 2012. (Photo by Raul Albaledo/AFP Photo)

Performers in costume wait to take part in the carnival on the main Parade day of the Notting Hill Carnival in west London on August 29, 2022. London's Notting Hill carnival celebrates Caribbean culture, at a carnival considered the largest street demonstration in Europe. (Photo by Susannah Ireland/AFP Photo)

A boy swims in Chao Phraya River as he helps to place a Krathong, or a “floating basket”, in the water amid a yearly festival during which rafts of neatly folded banana leaves, decorated with flowers, candles and incense, are offered to thank the water goddess for good luck and for using her water to grow crops and support all life, in Bangkok, Thailand on November 8, 2022. (Photo by Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters)

This photo taken and received courtesy of an anonymous source on April 8, 2021 show a woman looking at shoes displayed with flowers in Yangon's Myaynigone township, as part of the “Marching Shoes Strike” called on social media to protest against the demonstration against the military coup in Myanmar. (Photo by Handout via AFP Photo)

Children riding on donkeys queue to fill their jerrycans with water from a cistern at a make-shift camp for the internally displaced in Yemen's northern Hajjah province on July 12, 2021, amidst an extreme heat wave and severe water shortage. (Photo by Essa Ahmed/AFP Photo)

A girl with face pantings (C) looks on during a demonstration to mark al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day, after Friday prayers, in Kuala Lumpur on April 14, 2023. (Photo by Mohd Rasfan/AFP Photo)

The May Queen during the Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland on April 30, 2022. A dynamic reinterpretation of an ancient Celtic celebration of the return of summer, the festival is centered around the story of the May Queen and the Green Man, and the lighting of the Beltane bonfire, symbolic of purification, healing and new life. Edinburgh's Beltane celebrations are the largest of their kind in the world with around 250 volunteer performers and thousands of spectators. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)