Two Days in Dehang

As mentioned below, I spent part of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday in Dehang (德夯), in western Hunan Province. This beautiful village is located approximately 550 km west of Changsha, near the border with Guizhou and Chongqing. To get there, I took an eight-hour overnight train to Jishou, the gateway city to Dehang and many of western Hunan’s other tourist sites, such as Fenghuang and Zhangjiajie. From Jishou, it was another 50-minute bus ride to Dehang itself. (For comparison, traveling the 1,587 km from Changsha to Beijing takes just 13 hours. China’s train system is great, but by no means perfect, especially further west.)

But once I reached Dehang, any complaints were forgotten. The scenery could have been taken from a fairy tale. Tall mist-shrouded mountains rise up on either side of the village, which is divided in two by a river. Strike out away from the village square and you find yourself surrounded by terraced fields flooded in the recent rains. Although the small village center has plenty of touristy shops and restaurants, it is easy to escape into the “geopark” that surrounds the village (and justifies the 60 RMB entrance fee).

After I found a place to stay and took a restorative post-overnight-train nap, I braved the drizzle and struck out in search of one of Dehang’s two major sites, the Liusha Waterfall. I hardly saw any other tourists as I meandered through the valley. In fact, I hardly saw anyone else at all, a rare feeling in China. And an hour later, I was rewarded with a truly marvelous waterfall. Was it the largest in China? I find that hard to believe. But the veil of water descending the mountain was beautiful.

After the waterfall, I grabbed lunch at one of the several restaurants in town advertising Miao specialties. I don’t know what made my dishes distinctively Miao, but they were certainly delicious. Instead of ordering off of a menu, I looked at the ingredients available in the kitchen and chose what I wanted that way. The la rou (smoked pork) with ye cai (a generic name for edible herbs) was especially tasty. One downside to traveling solo in China is that the restaurants aren’t really set up for solo diners. I ordered two dishes — the la rou and a simple cabbage stirfry — and barely made a dent.

In the afternoon, I set off to climb to Tianwen Tai — literally, heaven-asking platform — to see the magnificent views over the mountains. I was somewhat disappointed to find, half an hour into my hike, that a bridge across the river was nearly washed out. Another downside to traveling alone — you are less willing to do stupid, potentially risky things. So although the rain gave me a more magnificent view of the waterfall, it disappointed my quest for magnificent, heaven-asking-range views. I came back into town and curled up at a teahouse with a book, a big mug of tea, some peanuts to munch on.

That night, after consulting with some of the other guests staying at the inn, I decided to save Fenghuang for another trip. I wasn’t that excited about Fenghuang in the first place, and I foolishly hadn’t made a hostel reservation, despite the national holiday. My new friends, who had just arrived from Fenghuang, warned that most places were full and/or charging extremely high rates. So the next day, after having breakfast and doing a bit of last minute gift shopping, I returned to Jishou and changed my train ticket for the afternoon train.

All in all, a quite successful, if shortened, trip. Dehang captures the beauty of Yangshuo’s karst scenery, with significantly fewer tourists. If you are in the vicinity, it’s absolutely worth a stop.

Related posts:

1. Dehang: Another Perspective
2. Dehang Photos
3. Snapshot: Revisiting Dehang
4. Coming up: The October 1st Holiday
5. The Oslo-Bergen Railway

Tagged as: Dehang, hiking, Hunan Province, off the beaten path