It is almost dawn in Madras in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In the baggage hall, a shrine to Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god, is flanked by two fire extinguishers. The god is garlanded with gorgeous flowers — lean down and you catch the sweetest scent of jasmine. At the quarantine desk a few paces away, a sleekly brilliantined Indian official dozes with a newspaper. A huge map of Madras — now known by many as Chennai — leans lopsidedly against the wall.

In the street, warm rain is falling in sheets on hurrying people — entire families seem to be on the move down the road, in spite of the ungodly hour. There are motorised rickshaws and Ambassador Classics, a car that looks like an older brother to the Morris Minor, and is as ubiquitous in India as images of Hindu gods.

As we climb into our tour bus, Adrian Locke, a curator from the Royal Academy in London, starts to teach me about the Chola dynasty. Next month the Royal Academy will be putting on show 31 rare bronze sculptures made during the reigns of the Chola kings, a dynasty that held sway in these parts from the 9th century for about 400 years. They were great conquerors: their impressive kingdom, at its height, encompassed southern India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and parts of Indonesia. They were great patrons of the arts, and great builders of Hindu temples. The bronzes that will be shown at the Royal Academy would all have belonged to one of these temples.

“There were two kinds of sculptures, one fixed, the other mobile,” Adrian says. “The mobile ones you will see in the show are all images of the Hindu gods that were used during religious festivals so that the people could see them.”

Later we are greeted by a delegation at the entrance to the Bronzes Gallery of the Government Museum of Madras. A corpulent soldier stands guard with an antique-looking rifle; two dogs play in the reddish dust. A great metal grille is thrown back and we walk into a narrow, dimly lit gallery to be addressed by Mr R. Balasubramanian, the museum’s curator of archaeology.

He explains how the huge number of gods and goddesses was made using a process called the “lost wax method”. You model a figure in a mixture of resin and beeswax and then coat it in clay. You then cool it and when it’s dry, you heat it and, after piercing it, let the hot wax run out, leaving a figure-shaped cavity that you then fill with a mixture of molten copper, tin, zinc and even a touch of silver and gold. Leave it to cool, chip away the clay and there is your devotional bronze.

He shows us a fine example of a Nataraja, a bronze of the god Shiva as Lord of the Dance, surrounded by a circle of flames, left leg raised. In one hand he holds a drum, in the other fire. He stands on a prostrated human form. This crushed body, we learn, represents Illusion.

The temples in which the bronzes were once displayed have an overwhelming physical presence and are flamboyantly decorated. “We Indians,” explains Sandhya Harendra, our guide from Bangalore, “like bright colours. We are not shy of them.” This is true. The great, ornamental gateways — gopurams — soar into the sky; the central shrine is often a pyramid shape, and everywhere there are brightly painted images of the gods, posturing, legs flung out, brandishing weapons. Here are the fabulous stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata told in three dimensions. The giddy range of colours — flamingo pinks, dusky blues, the brashest oranges — reminds you of a jar of boiled sweets. In mood it feels like a forerunner of the glorious excesses of Bollywood.

One of the greatest temple complexes is at the pilgrimage town of Chandambaran. It is here, at the Chidambara Natajara Temple, that Lord Shiva is worshipped as Lord of the Dance — and it is here that we see the Brahmin priests processing with a bronze on a palanquin just as they would have done a thousand years ago. The priests are something to behold. Many of them, with their torsos exposed to the sun, are young, svelte and androgynously beautiful, with their hair tied in a top knot.

They also seem exceedingly arrogant and vain. They have the measure of their own worth; they know what a gorgeous spectacle they are.

What is more, they are so fit from carrying these enormous bronzes around the temple almost every day that they move as swiftly as gazelles across the steaming heat of the temple courtyard. In the temple itself we get behind a procession. It is Pharvati, Lord Shiva’s wife, who is being carried around the temple before being taken back to her own shrine. She is adorned in silks — all the gods are adorned in similar ways. Only at the Royal Academy will you see them naked. The palanquin is carried on hefty tree trunks, which are borne across the shoulders of four priests. Each one looks slightly bandy-legged — unsurprisingly.

We try to keep up with them. It is as much as we can do.

hola: Sacred Bronzes of Southern India, Royal Academy, London W1 (www.royalacademy. org.uk 0870 8488484), from Nov 11 to Feb 25; £8, concs available; the Royal Academy’s trip to Tamil Nadu was organised by Cox and Kings (www.coxandkings.co.uk)