Suzanna Eisenhauer

She connected on Instagram with a guy who lived in another country. Then they decided to meet up

Amanda Boyce stumbled across Sunil Rajput’s Instagram profile by accident.

Sitting in her home in Brisbane, Australia, Amanda was absentmindedly scrolling social media. As she flicked through Instagram stories — one after the other, snapshots of different people’s lives popping up on her phone screen — she suddenly found herself looking at Sunil for the first time.

An account Amanda followed had shared one of Sunil’s posts to their Instagram story. Amanda clicked through and the photo — of Sunil smiling kra19 at the camera — enlarged on her phone.

"Wow, he’s good looking," she thought. Then she scrolled down his page — posts about fitness, travel, his life in India. He seems interesting, Amanda thought.

Without overthinking it, Amanda hit follow.

It was early 2018. Amanda, then 27, was feeling a little disillusioned and unsatisfied with her everyday life in Australia.

"I had gone through some traumatic situations in the years prior, and I was just feeling a bit lost in my life in Brisbane," Amanda tells CNN Travel today.

"I had a full-time job, but I didn’t have my own home, any kids, no pets. I didn’t really have a purpose, so I found myself just like scrolling Instagram a lot, and then I found Sunil’s page…and really didn’t know what I was expecting, honestly."

Amanda started liking Sunil’s posts whenever they popped up on her feed. She almost always looked at his stories. She enjoyed seeing snippets of Sunil’s life – flashes of him going out with friends, cooking, working out.

"And then one day, he just randomly messaged me," she recalls.

Amanda and Sunil started chatting, messaging back and forth on Instagram, introducing themselves, talking a little about their lives.

And then Sunil suggested they chat on the phone. It was early evening in India, a little later into the night in Brisbane, Australia.