The men who lead camels through the Hou-Shan, the Country Behind the Mountains, never call themselves anything but la-lo-t’o-ti, which is to say, “camel pullers”.
-The Desert Road to Turkestan, Owen Lattimore
In college I often sat at dinner with a classmate and member of the Afghan royal family who invited me to visit anytime I wished. This was a few years before the Soviet invasion so I’d missed my chance when I finally thought seriously about his offer. If I’d taken him up on it maybe I’d have met a la-lo-t’o-ti and ridden with him on an Inner Asian caravan, but then later I would likely not have met KhairAllah, the Kabbāshi eqivalent of a Camel Puller on the Darb al-’Arba’īn.