  We report the first observation of robust self-trapping of vortex beams
propagating in a uniform condensed medium featuring local saturable
self-focusing nonlinearity. Optical vortices with topological charge m=1, that
remain self-trapped over ~ 5 Rayleigh lengths, are excited in carbon disulfide
using a helical light beam at 532 nm and intensities from 8 to 10 GW/cm^2. At
larger intensities, the vortex beams lose their stability, spontaneously
breaking into two fragments. Numerical simulations based on the nonlinear
Schr\"odinger equation including the three-photon absorption and nonpolynomial
saturation of the refractive nonlinearity demonstrate close agreement with the
experimental findings.
