Australian Camp

We were three days away from Lia’s flight home and had no real appetite left for a multi-week circuit, but we still wanted one proper night up in the hills before the trip ended. A guesthouse owner in Lakeside suggested Australian Camp — a short, gentle route through Kande and Dhampus, popular with families and older trekkers, that gets you real mountain views without the altitude gain or logistics of Annapurna Base Camp.

An Easy Climb Through Gurung Villages

The trailhead starts at Kande, a half-hour taxi ride from Pokhara, and climbs through forest and then terraced farmland into Dhampus, a strung-out Gurung village where prayer flags hang between houses and older women sat outside doorways spinning wool. The walking itself is unhurried — three, maybe four hours of moderate ascent — and it’s the kind of trail where you pass buffalo, schoolchildren, and porters carrying supplies up to teahouses with equal frequency.

A Panorama Worth the Small Effort

The camp itself sits on an open grassy ridge, apparently named for an Australian film crew who camped there decades ago while shooting a documentary, though like most cave and camp origin stories in this valley, nobody could confirm the exact details. What isn’t in dispute is the view: an unobstructed sweep of Dhaulagiri, Annapurna South, Hiunchuli, and Machapuchare, all visible from a teahouse porch without a single hour of pre-dawn altitude suffering. We sat there with tea until the light went from white to gold to the deep orange that signals the sun is about to drop behind the far ridge.

We slept in a simple teahouse room with paper-thin walls and woke to roosters and a view of Machapuchare lit orange through a window with no curtain. It felt, oddly, like a fitting last night in the hills for Lia before her flight — not a summit, not an achievement, just the mountains doing what they do best.

When to go: October to December and March to April, matching the broader Annapurna trekking seasons — clear skies in autumn, rhododendrons blooming on the descent in spring. It’s walkable even for those with limited trekking experience or time.