Pico Iyer on ‘Rogue’: ‘It’s such a gorgeous-looking thing’

MANILA, Philippines - “I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when I went down to my local Fed Ex office and came away with my March issue of Rogue!” Pico Iyer, one of the world’s best-selling travel authors (Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk), e-mailed Rogue magazine editor-in-chief Paolo Reyes last week from Santa Barbara. “It’s such a gorgeous-looking thing. I’ve never been featured in a magazine with such a beautiful cover, it was so dazzling.”

This month, the celebrated Newsweek and Time writer — he famously penned Cory Aquino’s “Woman of the Year” cover story in 1986 — headlines Rogue’s annual Jet Set Issue (now available in leading bookstores and newsstands, and through Zinio.com/Rogue for the digital edition) with an exclusive interview about his travels to the Philippines. “No place I’d seen so tore at my heart,” Iyer says.

The Rogue cover that so dazzled Iyer features the stunning actress Rhian Ramos, photographed by celebrity lensman Mark Nicdao wearing only an emerald Hermès scarf and Bulgari jewelry. The Sosy Problems star answers the big, tough questions about her controversial “year in limbo” in an intimate and unscripted interview.

Other stories in the travel-themed issue include a special investigative report by award-winning BBC and New York Times journalist Jonathan Franklin, who uncovers the infamous cocaine bars of Bolivia in South America; an Egypt travelogue by photographer Gutsy Tuason, who cruised the Nile by night in search of tombs and temples; and a 14-page Asian travel guide written by DFA Secretary Albert del Rosario and Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) correspondent Bambina Olivares-Wise, among others.

Also in the issue is a photo essay on Turkey’s ritzy Bodrum Peninsula, the secret Aegean playground of Arabian princes and Russian tycoons; Luis H. Francia’s “My Summer with the Lady,” where he recounts his date with Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon; a first look at the $50 million Christina O, Ari Onassis’s fully-restored floating palace; and a dossier on Manila’s bespoke travel specialists, including Asia to Africa’s Jose Cortes III and IVAT’s Ines Delgado-Prieto, whose services until now have only been used by a select few.

“Rogue’s annual travel issue is essentially the greatest guidebook you will find for less than P300,” says editor-in-chief Paolo Reyes, who added that the top-selling luxury magazine has been redesigned, and now includes a new design section that covers interiors, architecture, transportation, and technology, as well as exciting new content in its style pages that addresses the upscale title’s dual male-female readership. “Every year, the challenge has always been to compile a balanced compendium of stories and photographs about, to borrow from the words of Theroux, ‘the places in between’ — the primitive and the dangerous, the laughable and the emphatically foreign. We hope you enjoy the ride.”