Some enterprising merchant actually moved Tamil-speaking craftspeople to the Red Sea coast of Egypt, in order to produce the Indian wares which were popular in the Roman Empire. That circumvented the problem with the monsoon winds, which made it necessary to have but one round trip a year to India.
OMG, I see I posted to that thread 8 years ago!
Amazing. At its best, the Roman world provided a vast area in which it was safe to trade and to move about. This did not occur again until the height of the European empires in the 19th Century — conceived of and administered by men educated to revere Rome’s accomplishments.