She had traveled quite a bit herself. She was born in India, where her parents, Vijaya and Dwarika Prasad Keshari, came together in an arranged marriage. Because of their jobs as researchers and university professors, they moved their family to Buffalo, then Puerto Rico and finally central New Jersey, where Ms. Keshari graduated from high school. Along the way, Ms. Keshari learned to speak three languages — Hindi, Spanish and English — and to make friends in a short time.

After attending Rutgers University, she lived briefly in Australia, where she befriended three fellow Americans and traveled with them around the country. Those friends were the other women in the car. As he had been doing all along on his trip, Mr. Danzico filmed the group’s interactions, occasionally pointing the camera on himself.

Ms. Keshari, who was living in New York and working for ESPN, was initially suspicious of Mr. Danzico. Who was this random guy from the internet? But soon she was charmed by his enthusiastic personality and sense of adventure. They discovered they were reading the same book, “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, and began sharing favorite passages.

“We were instantly friends,” Ms. Keshari recalled. “We got along together.”

Reflecting on that first filmed meeting, Mr. Danzico was more effusive. “When I met Sweety, I fell hopelessly in love with her,” he said, using a nickname given Ms. Keshari by her friends. It was not just her beauty, he said, but what he called her optimistic outlook and her creativity.