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)

American soldiers leaping from an armoured personnel carrier during exercises in Korea, 17th March 1954. (Photo by Three Lions)

An Indian woman wrapped in a shawl travels with others on a bullock cart on a cold day at Jhansi district, in Bundelkhand, India, Monday, December 29, 2014. Most parts of north India Monday continued to shiver under biting cold with the mercury dipping several notches. (Photo by Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Photo)

The sun rises over the River Brue on the Somerset Levels as temperatures in parts of the south west drop below freezing, on January, 20, 2015. (Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Wire)

A Palestinian man walks down snow-covered stairs after Friday prayers near the Dome of the Rock on the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City February 20, 2015. Snow covered Jerusalem and mountainous areas of Israel early Friday morning and the education ministry closed schools for the day. (Photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters)

In this February 28, 2015 photo, teammates struggle to lift a bull off the trapped leg of a charro, during the bull riding event at a charreada in Mexico City. National Charros Association President Manuel Basurto Rojas said: “We in charreria are taking things into our own hands. We have codes, we have rules, for how to treat the animals. On the other hand, there is a lot of danger involved for the men doing these tricks”. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

In this Wednesday, March 18, 2015 photo, limestone quarry workers walk through a cloud of dust spewed into the air by rotor blades of the stone-cutting machinery in the desert of Minya, southern Egypt. Around 45,000 people, including children, work in an estimated 1,500 quarries, digging out stones that later will be used in construction or powdered to be used by pharmaceutical and ceramic companies. (Photo by Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP Photo)