HIGH - MIGHTY

On the fringes of a lesserknown Kenyan park, a new lodge brings you face-to-face with some of Africa's most majestic animals. Paul Brady goes in search of the biggest beast of them all.

THE MOST POPULAR guy in all of southern Kenya has to be a 51-yearold named Craig. "Did you see Craig?" somebody will ask. And when you reply "not yet," the news will be met with a disappointed shake of the head. He comes up at breakfast; he's the subject of discussion at lunch. Over sunset cocktails, as the campfire gets crackling, you might hear the question: "What are the odds of seeing Craig tomorrow?" One day, I was traveling in Amboseli National Park with Emli Bendixen, who photographed this story, and a group of safari-industry insiders, when we all had to shelter from a pop-up thunderstorm in a cement building next to an airstrip. Then a text message came through to my guide, Johnson Salaash. "Charlie Romeo," code for Craig, had been spotted. A buzz ran through the bunker.

Somebody had tipped us off to the whereabouts of what might just be the most famous elephant in Africa: a "super tusker," as these rare animals are known, thanks to their oversize ivories that seem to scrape the earth. Over the decades, Craig has become a highly sought-after photographic prize. Turns out, he's devilishly difficult to spot-which is surprising, considering his body is the size of the Land Cruiser we were traveling in.

But after days of searching, we finally had some intel about his whereabouts-if not an exact set of coordinates. So as soon as the rain cleared, we got back in our vehicle and headed for a private conservancy east of the national park in search of "the big boy," as Salaash called him. That afternoon we saw cheetahs, buffalo, hyenas, and innumerable birds, but Craig remained elusive. As the sun dipped low, we agreed to head back to camp-and to rise early the next morning to resume our search.