It happened on the road to Frasassi.

Our group of four Indians, including two Berliners, had set off on a warm summer's day from Urbino in Italy to see the stalactites and stalagmites in the Grotte di Frasassi, about an hour's drive away. The Candigliano river ran through the Pesaro and Urbino region en route to our destination.

If we just stopped along the way and scrambled down the wild path, we could dip our feet in the stream that ran below, said one of the Berliners.

The water was clear, the stones polished, and the banks lined with green grass. How could we resist? So we slithered, slipped and trotted downward and there she was.

Across the narrow stream, on the sloping rocks, a slim Caucasian woman sunbathing alone. Her torso bare. Clad only in a bikini bottom. A picnic basket by her side and an open book in her hand.

She belonged in that moment, in that spot, secure and serene.

Our sudden, and perhaps dismaying arrival, didn't affect her composure. She continued to read and we went downstream and tried not to be too loud.

That image of naturalism and empowerment stayed.

Travelling in Europe, the concept of covering-up is often challenging. Especially in summer, when large drifts of people turn sun-worshippers along the coastline of Europe or just happen to believe as Michelangelo apparently did, "What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognise the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?"

Go to the Tiergarten in the heart of Berlin and find entire families without a stitch on, spending an afternoon out with three generations playing tennis (admittedly, with some amount of flapping), swimming and some even cycling around.

There is none of the pressure to meet exacting notions of beauty, shape or size. Nor is morality, virtue or shame an automatic appendage to nakedness. Instead there is a social recognition of the body being what the body is and the skin its natural clothing.

Go to Santorini, and a bus ride less than two hours away will bring you to one of many nudism-friendly (or clothing optional is another way to put it), mixed beaches along the popular tourist island. Vlychada, for one, was not too far from the Fira. Nor was the black sand beach of Perissa. At least, till some years ago.

Now, with its myriad problems of a faltering economy and refugee/migrant crisis, nudism on the coastline may soon be a thing of the past. The point being, Europeans tend to see clothing or a lack of it with perhaps the same sensibility as India's Santhals and Gonds of the past.

Attempts to cover up sit oddly with a certain European-ness. In Italy, earlier this year, there was a backlash after someone draped two nude Roman statues to spare the blushes of the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani during a visit to the Capitoline Museums.

Prudes of all hues should then eschew a visit to the treasure-rich city of Florence where Michelangelo's 5.17 metre nude David with his bits and pieces has stood for over five centuries and is the main draw for many tourists. Indeed, the nude form is familiar to public gaze through widely displayed paintings and sculpture in swathes of Europe.

Gawking at naturalists in flesh and blood, however, is not usually encouraged so there are strict codes of conduct at such venues for those who are covered up. A few years ago, after a trip to Granada, one drove from the Andalusian coast to Malaga, taking in Costa del Sol.

There were several kinds of naturalist beaches and coves there and my travelling companions from Netherlands and Greece discarded their clothes and dove into the sea. To my eternal regret I was overcome by timidity (although no one had the slightest interest in the antics of others) but the image of delighted abandon of nonchalant bathers became a cherished insight into living cultures that celebrated free spirit as much as choice.

What might a Parisian sensibility then make of the prudish BBC presenter who was outraged that burkinistas were being asked to junk their wet suits on French beaches?

"The French don't mind topless bathing, but they are fining someone who wants to cover up," he squawked, betraying what might be a lingering Victorian sensibility. If he was right should the converse then hold? If the norm is no skin-show in certain geographies, then shouldn't baring be accommodated as a sign of cultural equality?

In Berlin's Schoeneberg neighbourhood, a pedestrian plaza has been created in the Crellestrasse - the Crelleplatz. There is a little fountain and families are basking, eating ice cream and drinking wine, on a late afternoon.

Watched by indulgent parents, there are lots of little children, mostly in little knickers, frolicking, tumbling around in the water, playing and behaving as children once used to.

None of the "shame, shame, puppy shame" Indian admonishments to be found there.

Back in olive land, Umbria, a young Italian has come over with his pretty wife and new baby, snug in only a diaper, to show where the utilities are. The baby has a bald head and piercing blue eyes, and comes readily into my arms.

As I hold him facing me, the father exclaims, "That is not how to hold a baby." He turns the little one around in the curve of my elbow, so that the baby has a wide view, and smiles, "How will he see the world otherwise?" Or the world him.

That must be a European state of mind.

Manjula Sen