Ultimate Freedom

Ultimate Freedom is a travel novel of a trip taken by author Anja Kovačič at the beginning of a world pandemic. She has lived in Australia for a year and started her Oceania trip from Hawaii to Fiji, and all the way to the Solomon Islands. She is a journalist, an editor and a curious traveller. Ultimate Freedom is a gentle, feminine version of Nejc Zaplotnik's effort of making sense of the journey and aimlessness of striving to reach a goal. A lyrical travelogue and a playful self-confession with the trappings of a bildungsroman. A book you want to take on the road with you. Literally. - Boštjan Videmšek When observing nature, billion-year-old natural wonders, people seem irrelevant. Like the flight of a cockatoo, when it spreads its wings so spontaneously, completely freely, all the questions about life flew their way across the sky. When we leave everything behind … A novel about a traveller who is trapped on the Solomon Islands due to cancelled flights at the onset of a global pandemic. Alone. In a tropical paradise. Among unknown people and their customs. Left to her own ingenuity. She survives a tropical cyclone on the islands, experiences a murder among the aborigines, climbs Uluru just before it's closed, dives with sharks and in the middle of the Australian wilderness, under a thousand stars in the vast sky, goes into the depths of her being. She embraces her vulnerability and discovers the infinite strength in freedom. "If you truly know your hearts desire, trust that it will become a reality one day."

EYES WIDE OPEN To travel. To experience. To explore. To be heard. Understood. Accepted and loved. To be free. To be happy, yet trapped. We live in a world of fast opportunities. There are gazillions of them. But rarely do opportunities come knocking twice. Therefore, I believe we should embrace the ones that come and welcome them. Coming back to my hometown to people that I know is a strong signal of me returning to myself. Returning to the road, where I meet my other half. My other me. The one that has been waiting for me at home this whole time. Perhaps already at the beginning of my journey. But on the other side of it. I have put down the thoughts guiding you to the innermost parts of my life, in the time of haste and hardship when managing my self-awareness and accepting the person that has been revamped during a fifteen-month long journey across Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, and the Solomon Islands. In the absence of the geographical attachment and left in peace I have begun to understand who I really am. What it is that makes me happy, what do I wish to do, who are the people that complete me, who are the ones I wish to have beside me, and what is the thing that smothers me and is redundant in my life? I have met many people whom I know crossed my path for a reason. The reason being the learnings – I learn from them and we learn from each other. About relationships, people, and about myself. They have showed me what happiness is, how to get to it and what life is like if you are happy or not, and what road leads to this freedom of thoughts. I have survived Australian wild fires, a tropical cyclone on the Solomon Islands where I had been stuck due to the pandemic not for seven but for forty-seven days. I have encountered a homicide in an Australian Aboriginal community and been a victim of a physical assault from Aboriginal renegades in the middle of the night. I have dived with sea sharks and enjoyed myself under thousands of stars in the endless sky of the Australian wilderness. I have met a man who showed me the basic struggles of a romantic relationship so (un)known to me and showed me what it means in simple terms – to love somebody. I knew then and there that I did not wish to have any regrets. And that I would be wiser at the end of my journey. But what I didn't know then, was the fact that the road would be filled with bumps, making me revisit and dissect my past. This bad road of self-acceptance was further damaged by the effect of individualization caused by the Coronavirus. The latter would cause my wounds to open up faster and more persistently. The challenges I encountered made me stronger. Therefore, my steps towards my personal freedom I've been chasing my whole life, would sound lighter, as I returned home. Ending my journey at the furthest part of the world has brought me to the beginning. I am what I am, because of the people that surround me from the day I was born. My thoughts are a culmination of everything I have seen, heard, and experienced. Of everything I have felt in my crazy, vivacious life. We are entering into an uncertain future by awakening our consciousness using high energy vibrations that are created on Earth through the channel of unknown conscious or unconscious spirals of emotions. Vastly clear resolutions will be required that will call on our time. This time we will have to make as well as all of the social and natural changes that await us. While inhaling and exhaling intensely. Being alone or not. In these times probably sitting at home, an antigen test placed in the drawer, keeping us company. Nonetheless, it is of utmost importance that we live life being aware of our true self. The true self that we so love. This book you are going to be reading is about my journey of experiences, new lessons, and rooted patterns that I had to face so I could in full honesty say that I love myself. And the beginning of the world pandemic in 2021.

Anja Kovačič is a young, curious journalist, an editor, and a communicative woman that loves traveling. Determine. Creative. Positive. Hard-working. Traveller that got trapped on the Solomon Islands due to cancelled flights at the onset of a global pandemic. Alone. In a tropical paradise. Among unknown people and their customs. Left to her own ingenuity. She survives a tropical cyclone on the islands, experiences a murder among the aborigines, climbs Uluru just before it's closed, dives with sharks and in the middle of the Australian wilderness, under a thousand stars in the vast sky, goes into the depths of her being. She embraces her vulnerability and discovers the infinite strength in freedom. After returning home she publishes her first travel novel that become a best-seller in Slovenia. "If you truly know your hearts desire, trust that it will become a reality one day."