In fact I don't use DPTR thorough most of the program, so I could just (ab)use it for this very purpose and nothing else, so no reloading. Unfortunately I need two such counters and there's only one DPTR, plus there's no DEC DPTR.

In fact I use it only once for a bogus purpose of converting a program label into two bytes I can save. BTW, any wiser method to do:

mov DPTR,#RETURN
mov R_LO,DPL
mov R_HI,DPH
(...)
RETURN:

?