A US soldier (C) point his gun towards an Afghan passenger at the Kabul airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan's 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city's airport trying to flee the group's feared hardline brand of Islamist rule. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP Photo)

A girl looks on at a diver dressed as Santa Claus performing during a promotional event for Christmas in Seoul, South Korea on December 3, 2021. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

People take photos in a field of Yellow Desert Sunflowers as wildflowers begin to bloom in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California after a record-setting wet winter of rain, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California, U.S. March 20, 2024. (Photo by David Swanson/Reuters)

Myanmar's Theiri Aung, seen in action during the women's sepak takraw semifinal against Vietnam, at the Southeast Asian Games in Hanoi, on May 17, 2022. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Dawlish Carnival 50th anniversary pram race featuring the famous Dawlish Black Swan in England on August 15, 2023. (Photo by nidpor/StockimoNews/Alamy Live News)

Kenichi Ito runs on his arms and legs on a race course on his way to setting the Guinness World Record fastest time for the 100-meter dash on all fours at Komazawa Olympic Park Stadium in Tokyo Thursday, November 14, 2013. The 30-year-old Japanese finished in 16.87 seconds Thursday, shaving more than half a second off his 2012 run of 17.47. (Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo)

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 flood affected boy on a makeshift banana raft collects biscuit packets distributed by a government official from a boat in Pokoria village, east of Gauhati, north eastern Assam state, India, Monday, August 14, 2017. Heavy monsoon rains have unleashed landslides and floods that killed dozens of people in recent days and displaced millions more across northern India, southern Nepal and Bangladesh. (Photo by Anupam Nath/AP Photo)