Our horseman: Guddu or Dharm?

I'LL start out with our horseman and the relationships we formed with him over three weeks of walking together, eating together, and generally being in close proximity.
In Manali we were told his name was Guddu and as we drove into Zanskar Sumdo there waited a lone horseman who responded to the same name. He was young for a horseman - twenty-four where Mum was expecting a weathered old man, who she hoped would hum as he walked the mountains he had been navigating all his life.Very soon it became clear that Guddu did not speak any English, bar the words "my horse" and "my house," - which could mean anything from 'my house,' to someone else's house or a whole village. Communication was not really an issue as my Hindi was enough to get us by most of the time and Mum and Guddu developed an effective system of using hand gestures while talking fluently in their own natural tongue at each other. It usually got the message across. Guddu was humble and very polite and was soon calling Mum 'Aunty' and treating her like an old lady, which she rather liked.
The first palava we had occurred within the first few minutes of communicating with Guddu; he had forgotten to bring a stove, which was of course an essential ingredient for our trek. He said his brother had the stove and he would be in Zanskar Sumdo in the next one to twenty days. There were only two other groups there and the nearest village was 2000 rupees away. The 'hotel' man didn't have one. (Hotels are small tea shops, often made from old parachute tents, that were at some of the campsites along the way. They collect camping and horse grazing fees and are supposed to clean up the copious amounts of rubbish most trekking groups leave behind.) The second group consisted of twenty Indian college students and their teacher, camped cheekily on the other side of the fence to avoid paying the fee (Mum and I were horrified when they told us we'd be trekking all the to Lamayuru together - so much for peaceful Himalayas). Guddu eventually went over to ask them and came back grinning with a rusty stove. A stove that would cause us a fair bit of frustration but eventually see us all the way through to Lamayuru. Turns our he purchased it from their horseman for the price of a brand new one.
We soon had a routine established with Guddu wherein we would eat breakfast and dinner together and walk apart during the day. We'd usually meet around lunchtime as he overtook us and once or twice (the time I almost fell down the mountain and the time Mum rode a mule across the river) he helped us out of a tricky patch. But otherwise Mum and I would leave after breakfast and Guddu would stay back to load up the horses and then set off.
Guddu often made chai in the morning and despite what I said before he did cook us a decent number of delicious meals. He was very particular about his food and more than once he turned down Mum's sabji and our quinoa porridge breakfast. He could cut onions as well as a chef (holding the whole thing together in his hand while he cut it into perfect pieces) and make round chapattis without a rolling pin. My onion cutting was rejected and the two times Mum and I tried to make chapattis he called them Punjab papads, naan bread and other mocking names. Mainly in jest but I soon gave up on trying to wash his pots and pans (he unhappily pointed out a patch of black soot I had left on the underside) and stopped listening to his complaints about our cooking. Twice Guddu made a delicious lassi sabji for our dinner. He gave me the recipe, which I will put up later. He also made great dal and for a couple of breakfasts he made a delicious rice dish. I have to say, simple things like a cup of chai being made for you in the morning, or dinner after a long trek makes a huge difference. Although waiting for Guddu to make dinner often left us eating past nine pm.
Two things Guddu was not good at was punctuality (making dinner before seven, as we had asked for) and calculating distance. When Guddu said the day's walk would take five hours it would take between seven and eight, and we soon learned to estimate the day's walk by adding at least two hours to his quotes. Guddu also worried a fair bit - about his horses, money, potentially running out of kerosene, potentially not finding us when we took a jeep from Reru to Karsha, and so on.
He was good most everything else though. When we arrived in Chuminakpo he and another horseman got out their hammers and nails and proceeded to cold shoe the horses. Pretty impressive. It also became clear he was a much better housewife than Mum and I, judging by the scolding we received and Guddu's cooking and cleaning skills. Finally, observing the relationship he had with his horses was quite humbling. Not all horsemen we saw along the way were the same but a couple stood out; particularly Guddu and another nineteen year old horseman named Karam who we met along the way. They use certain sounds (whistling and a throaty 'oh, oh, oh' being the main ones) that can mean walk on, stop (and they do stop in their tracks), turn around, it is okay, etc. The horses, no matter how flighty or bitey with others, are like angels with their horsemen.They listened to their horsemen, but the opposite was also true; both depend on the other for their livelihood and it is clear when one observes the bond between them. On the Shingo La our horses' legs were going straight through the snow and two of them (to my horror) fell and rolled a few metres down the mountain. They lay still until Guddu had untied all of their bags and had another man help to hoist them up.When our horse Kallu did not want to take a path we went elsewhere, and when Kali poisoned himself on some Ladakhi flowers and we could not find a vet for three days, Guddu became clearly depressed (we eventually found a vet in Hanupatta and left Kali behind for a week of injections).
Mum and Guddu got along well. Like I said, they didn't have spoken language but managed to communicate with each other just fine when it was needed. To Guddu and the other Indians we met along the way Mum was considered quite the old lady. They called her 'aunty' and became very concerned when she was sick. They were all surprised at how 'fast' she could walk. Mum and Guddu had a constant discourse going over the height of our horse cum kitchen tent/tarp. Mum would say it was too low, she couldn't sit up straight, and Guddu needed a new stick. Guddu would half know what she was saying and repeat that the tarp was too low - "chota chota'. The next day nothing would have changed and they would have the same conversation again. It was quite humorous.
Guddu and I got along well and I was happy for the opportunity to polish my Hindi. It definitely improved on our trek, although I still have a way to go. Guddu  fell a bit in love with me but that story is for another time; it goes under my 'multiple love stories' section. Our conversations usually consisted of the necessities and once or twice I braved the attempt to use more complex Hindi. On those occasions I learned he has been a horseman for six years, has three brothers working as either horsemen or salesmen and did have one sister but she died young. He dropped out of school at thirteen and learned horsemanship from his father.
One evening in the final few days of our trek Guddu was looking through his things and pulled out an ID card. We asked to look at it and were surprised to find, 'name Dharm Singh, age 29,' written on the card. Mum and I asked Guddu why it said Dharm, not Guddu and he proceeded to explain it was his brother's name, no it was his name, no it was his nickname. He laughed and looked slightly guilty and we asked again but by then he had fixed his explanation on the latter: Nickname, nickname. He said to keep calling him Guddu so we did. Although with a hint of suspicion.
When we stopped in Hanumila Guddu's brother had left him a bag of horse shoes as he passed. When the woman asked Guddu his name he saw me listening and halted before telling her it was Guddu. I was sure she said (in Hindi) "Oh yes, your brother Guddu was here!" On the last day Guddu gave me his contact details, which had been written on a piece of paper by someone else (Guddu can't write English). When I started copying them down he crossed out the name Guddu and said, "My brother... Send it to Dharm for me." We have worked out that we were assigned Guddu Singh, Guddu's (Dharm's) older brother, who is also a horseman. He was in Mandi when they called him up and couldn't make it in time, so he called his little bro.When we arrived in Zanskar Sumdo and started calling out for Guddu, Dharm decided to roll with it. He will always be Guddu to us though.