Dem a loot, dem a shoot, dem a wail

I met an Indian shoeshine man this weekend. He showed me around for a while, and I either did something very nice for him or got taken in the most unnecessarily elaborate scam ever.
Either way, he took me to a few sites that are sorta off the map here, including a 15th century shrine in a hidden courtyard, and to a khukuri shop (A khukuri is a knife used by the Gorkhas; they sell adorned and crappy ones around my neighborhood, as well as some very expensive decent ones). This guy took me to a shop where they make them (which is actually pretty fun to watch.) We then took a mini-bus out to Boda, a Tibetan Buddhist stupa, which is somewhat anomalous here, in that it’s almost exclusively Buddhist, rather than Newari or Hindu, and I went back with him to a shanty town nearby to drink tea with his wife and daughter (as for the scam part, he asked me to help him buy a shoeshine box; they mostly use these elaborate mango wood kits, which functions as a proxy for a work permit for shoeshiners, which sounds bizarre, but is actually a decent system if you don’t have a functioning government).
Either way, I know where he lives.
A few pictures are up as well, at http://flickr.com/photos/27253492@N04/ (for some reason blogger won't let me put up a normal link.