Poon Hill to Australian Camp & Dhampus

This is the route for trekkers who've already decided Poon Hill won't be the only thing on this trip, whether that means a few extra days now or a longer trip to come. The first four days follow exactly the same ground as the Classic Loop — the Ulleri staircase, Ghorepani, the Poon Hill sunrise, and the descent to Ghandruk — but from Ghandruk, this itinerary breaks entirely from the standard return. Rather than heading back through Kimche toward Nayapul, the trail continues to Landruk and Tolka, well-established Gurung villages on the older Annapurna Sanctuary trail corridor, before reaching Pothana — a shared checkpoint village that links directly into the same Kande-Dhampus corridor used by the Mardi Himal and Annapurna Base Camp treks documented elsewhere in this series. From Pothana, the route passes Australian Camp, a well-known viewpoint of its own popular enough to support a small cluster of lodges, before descending through Dhampus to a final exit at Phedi rather than Nayapul. The result is a loop that genuinely never repeats itself — the outbound and return routes share no villages at all — and, for trekkers with more time or ambition, a clean jumping-off point onto two of the other major trekking networks in this document series without a single wasted day retracing old ground.