My cousin Michael is an eclipse-chaser: having witnessed his first total solar eclipse in Indonesia almost 20 years ago, he vowed to see every subsequent one he could in his lifetime. For years, I knew that this quest would take him to either Mongolia or Siberia in the bleak March days of 1997, and I dreamed of tagging along: the sheer, unyielding space of the Eurasian steppe has always held for me a fascination proportionate to its dimensions.

In the summer of 1996, my aunt and I decided to go on tour with the eclipse groupies. She, my cousin and I joined a party at JFK in New York on March 5, and roughly 24 hours later -- via Anchorage, Shanghai, and Beijing -- we touched down in Ulan Bator.

The final, 2+ hour leg from Beijing took us over stunning expanses of terrain; from a cloudless sky we could see the tawny contours of the Gobi desert's dunes and valleys. The runway was not busy, and few if any passengers on our flight knew anyone in Mongolia, yet the meet-and-greet area was packed. Rows of locals -- most of them clad in Mongolia's traditional costume of a belted long coat, or deel -- stood watching us as we walked towards our mini buses. It seemed the spectacle of so many westerners arriving at once was an event both rare and entertaining enough to warrant a special trip to the airport.

If they found us a remarkable sight, I found them utterly captivating for people-watching. The Mongolians' style of dress and their physical features seemed so distinctive and exotic, yet oddly familiar, as though the empire's glory days perhaps left a lasting image in humanity's collective memory. After a 12-hour nap at hotel Chinggis Khaan -- a 4-star, 10-storey, very modern extravaganza that had not, at that time, much in common with the rest of Ulan Bator -- we ventured into the city, again by mini bus.

Imposing but dilapidated Soviet-bloc style buildings and squares dominated much of the centre. One old building houses the Natural History Museum, where we saw the bones of a Tarbosaurus Bataar -- close relative of T. Rex himself -- unearthed in the sands of the Gobi. Impressive though these remains, the museum had a neglected air, like much of the city itself. Amidst its wintry pallor, the Buddhist Gandan monastery offered an oasis of colour and beauty. The 19th-century monastery was one of the only ones to survive the systematic suppression of Mongolia's Buddhist religion and culture during the communist era (ending here in 1990). Today it is the largest one in the country, with more than 400 monks, and visitors may watch them chant. Its full name, roughly translated, means "Island of Perfect Rejoicing."

Alas, such perfection eluded the avid astronomers on our trip. Early in the morning of March 9, the path of totality cut an arc, about 400 km wide, across the barren miles of Siberia, dipping into northern Mongolia and China as it skimmed across the hemisphere, visible in any given spot for scant minutes. Ulan Bator was not in on its route, so any hope of catching a glimpse meant rising in the predawn hours, boarding a mini bus and setting off for a ride of several hours across the rocky byways of the darkened wilderness, towards the Siberian border.

Every eclipse-chaser staying in Ulan Bator followed the same plan, so our vans and buses formed a cavalcade of head and tail lights, yellow and red, snaking across the nighttime steppe. We stopped at one point on the roadside for a cigarette break, and after some minutes our endearing bus driver began tapping his watch and pointing at the sky, afraid to miss the main event.

But we missed it anyway, in the sense that clouds obscured the black disc and shimmering corona that so many experience as a life-altering vision. Two of our vans pulled up along an empty roadside together, and we poured out, shivering in our state-of-the-art parkas specially purchased for the trip. The snowy landscape simply grew darker -- the morning light was dull anyway -- and we stood. In a country known for its high pressure systems, it was a shame. With nothing to look skyward for, I watched the two drivers share snacks. I was happy with this, but I'm no astronomer.

Afterwards, we had a kind of breakfast in Darhan, a Russian-influenced town of 80,000+ (though I don't remember it seeming that big). It might have been a restaurant that we ate in, but it felt more like a community hall, replete with blinis and women in Siberian-style dress. Well fed, we began the long drive back to Ulan Bator -- my favorite part of the whole sojourn, because it gave us a chance to look at isolated yurts and wave to their horseback-riding inhabitants. I have a vague memory of a sixth grade geography book in which I read about the Mongolian steppe, its nomads and their summer sports festival, Naadam. Against a canvas of the coolest colours -- wide blue sky, green grass, purple hills -- the people engage in three hearty days of horse racing, wrestling and archery. I hope to return to Mongolia some florid July and see that. My interest in this amazing place is far from exhausted.