Thread by @gauravsabnis

Awe inspiring Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan! Breathtaking!

Can't climb it currently cos renovation work happening. Tho we got here early before the buses to avoid the long lines. But there is no line.

I am the one who knocks!

The sheer scale of this place is hard to fully capture.

Pyramid of the Moon

From ancient pyramids to pocket credit card readers, Teotihuacan has it all!

What a city! It's like a multi layer cake of history. Btw tho they are called Pyramid of the sun and the moon, that's not necessarily whom they were built to worship 2 millennia ago. It's Aztecs 500 years ago that gave them these names.

There is no record of exactly what caused Teotihuacan to decline and perish but I think we can rule out white walkers from North of the wall. So much obsidian!

After a LOT of walking, built up an appetite for a big meal.

This is a meal of the past and especially the future. Grasshoppers and wild rabbit have zero carbon footprint.

Naaktodyaachi bhaji aani makyachi chapati. 😋

Tangent: A nice touch in #Avenue5 is given that it's set 40 years in the future, the food they order on the show is all clearly sustainable and from a climate change ravaged world where industrial meat and cattle have gone extinct. They order stuff like rabbit or insects.

One of the museum displays talks about how the pre Hispanic food from Mexico is textbook sustainable perfectly fitting our needs. And their agave based liquors too.

Grasshoppers are so delicious!

Conejo Asado. Roasted rabbit. Tastes like chicken. And rabbits are plentiful. They are literally infamous for how fast they breed.

Teotihuacan was full of as many vendors and sellers as any tourist site in India. But they are so soft spoken in their sales pitches. No yelling, no aggressive hard sell.

Mexicans in general are a very soft spoken people.

I've been to 30 countries, many of them developing countries. Nowhere do you see pointlessly aggressive hard sell like Delhi and Agra. Especially on things like a bus or taxi ride. Arre I don't want to go to badarpur border or buy handkerchiefs!!!

But then I'm from Pune. We are probably the exact opposite of hard sell. In Pune you often have to convince a vendor or shopkeeper to engage in commerce.

Indoris are experts at sweet hard sell. They can lure you in with a "beeya dekhne ka koi peesa nee" and upsell you before you realize what happened.

Delhi folks tho hard sell in such an off putting way many times that you don't buy even if you want to!

Heh be it Instagram today or murals from 2000 years ago, humans are obsessed with cat pics. Even Egyptians who also built pyramids were also into cats.

And then I suddenly had an anthropological epiphany! When cultures get very rich is when they start pampering cats.

One of my favorite things to teach in pricing or branding classes is something Don Hambrick once taught me.

In today's America, you get cat food and dog food in the same aisle and their components aren't THAT different. But on average, cat food is more expensive.

Why?

In poor countries, cats are everywhere too. But they mostly "hunt" their own food. Or owners give them milk or basic food. In fact humans domesticated cats mainly to get rid of rodents.

But when you get rich, rodents aren't the concern they used to be.

Your pets have no utilitarian purpose like on farms. They only exist for your affection.

Cats are withholding. Dogs are not.

So cat owners tend to spend more, hoping that will get them some extra attention or the damn cat will stop looking surly for once.

Dogs easier to please

And this is the reminder of a key concept in pricing.

Price is NOT cost plus a certain profit margin. The way you are taught in high school.

Price is whatever your target customer is willing to pay for what you're selling.

And US cat owners are willing to pay more.

What is common to ancient Egyptian and Teotihuacan? They were prosperous enough to build these huge pyramids that have weathered millennia. So they were likely also prosperous enough to not think of cats as just rat catching machines. And started glamorizing them.

Makes sense?

Just like we today for all our problems have reached an aggregate level of prosperity (or economic surplus) and also know-how where we don't get cats to eat rodents. In fact most cat owners today would be aghast if their kitty ate a rat instead of Purina.

That extra love, which is one sided cos cats just aren't very affectionate by nature, also expresses itself in us filling up the Internet with cat pictures.

Murals and sculptures were the Instagram of millennia ago. So cats show up in image form in Egypt and Mexico.

Just look at the quality of artisans they had 2000 years ago. To be able to have artisans who perfected this quality, you need substantial economic surplus.

Also notice how they don't really look all that fundamentally different from artifacts in Asia or Africa.

This is yet another in a long list of circumstantial evidence that there most likely must have been contact between the "old world" and the "new world" that was somehow forgotten until Spaniards and Portuguese lucked out with bad navigation.

Did they call this god this name cos his facial expression teotally says hue-hue-hue? 😝

After 3.5 days of almost continuously being on our feet and logging 65K steps on Fitbit, we are taking the evening off.

And doing our own mezcal tasting. The reposado is there to see if we can tell the difference in a blind taste test between it and mezcal.

Cheers!

I've seen all kinds of scratched graffiti around the world in my travels, on rocks, walls, trees. But never on a plant!!

There was even a sign saying "Respect our national treasure and DON'T scratch your name on the Agave".

What all weird things we humans do!

1. Model and original!
2. Quetzalcoatl, hands down the most badass God ever
3. Some amazingly durable shellfish art. They were so advanced!
4. Agarbatti stands. Incense holders.

I'm now replacing OMG with OMQ.

Oh My Quetzalcoatl! Even saying the name pumps up the adrenaline!

This is now my 6th LatinX country (8th if you count Miami and California) and I've started understanding enough Spanish to understand the songs playing around me.

And lol so many love songs have lines just straight up saying I want you naked. Not just Despacito.

In the Anglo world we are still using coy lyrics for sex and the Latinos are like

Quiero desnudarte a besos despacito
Firmar las paredes de tu laberinto

And

Que le enseñes a mi boca (uh oh, uh oh)
Tus lugares favoritos

👍💪 🍆

Also I've been hearing and reading a lot about the sky here and that randomly makes the 90s Indian kid in me wonder whatever happened to the Daewoo Cielo? It was the hottest car on the market for the white collar crowd in India for a while. And now it's gone!

We were sitting on a temple's steps for a breather between exploring the massive expanse of Teotihuacan. Near us was this stunningly gorgeous woman. A vendor walked up to her with obsidian stuff. She said no, not now. He started chatting with her (not hitting on her).

I was able to understand what they were saying

Him: You're not from Mexico. I can tell by your accent. Venezuela?

Her: Colombia

And I'm like, of course the most strikingly good looking person I've seen on this trip is from Colombia! 🤷🏽🤷🏽
@prichills

Colombia legit has the hottest people on the planet, at least the way we currently define hotness. Men and women and anyone else.

A few days into our Colombia trip in 2019, @prichills had said, how are there so many hotties around ??? And we all agreed. @k_rupal

It's unreal!

Colombia also has gorgeous natural beauty, gorgeous birds, so being in the country is like an aesthetic overdose. In a good way.

Your eyes are always stretched wide in Colombia, whether you're admiring the nature, the architecture, the birds, or the people.

Mexico is a gorgeous country too with gorgeous people. It reminds me so much of Colombia.

So far my favorite countries I've vacationed in are Colombia, Trinidad & Tobago, Scotland (give em a referendum, Sunak!), Finland, and now Mexico.

When I say favorite, I mean countries that make me think I could totally live here for the rest of my life if I had to leave Murrca. The people in all those countries are just amazingly nice. Their food is great. And they have amazing outdoors & history.

Western Europe, Canada, and Australia were great to visit but I can't see myself moving there.

One more thing I stan Colombia for. They went through so much bloodshed and strife but never abandoned democracy. They had only one generalissimo and even he was arguably the most benign dictator in history. Peaceful coup coordinated with conservative AND liberal politicians.

You know what he did as dictator? Expanded women's suffrage, invested in infrastructure. After 4 years, stepped down. Since 1957, Colombia has remained a democracy even through Escobar terrorism and militia revolutionaries.

History that should be taught in schools worldwide.