T H I S+W E E K > Sleeping with elephants By Don Meredith Earth-shaking encounters in Kenya Sleepless in Siena By Don George, Editor The strangest place I've ever slept Man is an island By Jan Morris The Isle of Man is the last contented jewel in Britain's imperial crown D E P A R T M E N T S The Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer Corn off the cob Passages "Desiring Italy" Mary Taylor Simeti's Sicilian journal Readers' Tips and Tales My private wanderlust - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LA S T+W E E K Tuesday, August 12, 1997 S t .+E l v i s - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Who took the grace out of Graceland? By Cintra Wilson Our columnist goes to Memphis The King and us By Christina Boufis The world's most maniacal Elvis fans Way dead Elvis By Greil Marcus A tribute to the King proves that his posthumous legend has become equal parts sincerity and trash A full list of all Wanderlust articles

among elephants A N +U N F O R G E T T A B L E +N I G H T +A T K E N Y A ' S +T S A V O +N A T I O N A L +P A R K . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY DON MEREDITH | "if you had pitched your tent over there," Godi, our Tanzanian cook, waves a hand toward a solitary thorn tree, "the earth would now be trembling." It's a few minutes before sunrise. Coffee's on and bacon sizzles over an acacia-wood fire. A few yards beyond the tree where Godi points, two dozen elephants splash and rumble at the rim of a bore hole -- mothers and young, some old matriarchs the size of firehouse pumpers. When we arrived yesterday afternoon, the nyika, the arid plain surrounding our camp, was empty of game. Not a bird or lizard tracking the dust. A flat place in the shade of the thorn tree, a few yards from the bore hole, seemed a perfect campsite. I spread the canvas and pounded the stakes. Godi stood nearby, watching from under his hat. A tall man with the sweetness and patience of a Fra Angelico saint, he waited a long time before he spoke. "Not a good place, bwana." "Really? Why not?" "Tembo," he said. "Elephant." "What elephant?" Now, at first light, I observe the evidence of Godi's caution. If I'd pitched my tent where I wanted, I'd have been flattened. Tsavo East National Park lies two hours west of Mombasa, East Africa's principal port, and Tsavos East and West make up Kenya's biggest national park -- among the world's largest wildlife sanctuaries. Established in 1948, and now combined with Chyulu Hills, it covers over 8,000 square miles and exists as a measure of Kenya's commitment to its natural heritage. We left Mombasa early and by noon turned off the Nairobi Highway to enter Tsavo East at Buchuma Gate. Instantly, herds of gazelle and zebra appeared, grazing along the road, and within a mile a solitary bull elephant shambled out of a gray ocean of thorn-tree scrub. This was not just any bull, but a creature of enormous size and age, carrying a massive pair of gleaming tusks -- "hundred-pounders," in the parlance of white hunters. When he spotted the old bull, Limo Ndungu, driving our Land Rover, jerked to a halt and stalled the engine. Limo is an experienced safari hand, and he thought he'd seen everything wildlife could offer -- but here was an elephant he could not believe had survived. In the 1960s, the Tsavo elephant population was so large -- between 50,000 and 60,000 -- that a battle had raged over the need to cull them; by the close of the 1970s, as a result of slaughter by ivory poachers, only 4,000 remained. Yet despite the odds, here loomed a beast that had seen generations of native Akamba trackers, then the age of the great white hunters -- Bror Blixen, J.A. Hunter, Denys Finch Hatton and so on -- and finally the decades of decimation by poachers. Somehow he'd hung on, a symbol of the will to endure. We followed him through featureless bush for a quarter-hour before he veered from the road and was lost in the enormity of the heat's shimmer. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - NEXT PAGE | Moonstruck in the moonwashed nyika DETAIL OF ILLUSTRATION BY KAREN BARBOUR

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