I lived in a huge CAVE for more than a month – it felt like being on the moon…but there were still rows over the washing
A MAN who lived in Europe’s biggest cave for over a month said it felt like being on the moon but there were frequent rows over the washing-up.
Christian Clot, along with 14 other volunteers, called the dark cavern home for 40 days while having no access to phones, watches, or natural light.
The extreme “world first” experiment was carried out in the Lombrives cave in Ariege, France, as Clot aimed to explore the effect on the human body of long-term isolation with no notion of time.
The French volunteers who took part in the experiment in 2021 were provided with four tons of supplies to live on, along with water from the cave and a pedal-driven dynamo for electricity.
Clot named the project the “Deep Time” experiment, which began on March 14, 2021, and ended on April 22 of the same year.
Following the bizarre cave stay-cation, Clot revealed that as the cave was so huge, the team of 15 was able to split it into three sections.
“One was the base camp and we had a nice place with a cooking stove and in a food and all to have some fun and nice time in a way,” he told BBC Science Focus.
The other two areas were used for sleeping and science experiments.
The explorer also described the French cave as dark, with faint shades of yellow, red, and orange – and said it was cold, and smelt of rocks and humidity.
“It felt as if we were on the moon,” he said.
But Clot said one of the most challenging aspects of cave living was not having his phone – and for the reason you may think.
“It was a bit difficult for the first time to wake up and you just don’t know what time is it,” Clot said.
“And you just have to think, oh, how much time did I [sleep]? Was it enough? So you need to adjust a lot”.
But not knowing the time wasn’t the only thing the explorer struggled with in the cave, as he revealed the one simple chore that apparently started the most rows between the adventurers.
“After a while, people got familiar with the cave and began to forget to do chores and work tasks,” he wrote in The Guardian.
“There were arguments over food and washing-up. It was impossible to organise group tasks in these conditions, so after 17 cycles, or sleeps, we had a big group meeting to clear the air. It was tense. It took hours of discussion”.
But the team quickly reunited and fell back into a “natural rhythm” as Clot continued to study the psychological impact that a lack of the sense of time has on the human body.
One of the participants — 29-year-old Arnaud Burel — told Oddity Central that he agreed to take part in the unusual experiment in order “to taste this timeless life, which is impossible outside with our computers and mobile phones that constantly remind us of our appointments and obligations.”
However, the biologist agreed that spending nearly six weeks trapped in a cave with 14 strangers would not be easy and that he felt communication would be key to ensuring their time together went smoothly.
Clot said it was “disturbing” to see his and the other’s body clocks changing within the cave as he would often experience moments where he would be eating his breakfast while another was going to bed.
But although it was uncomfortable for the group, the explorer said there was only one absolute rule.
“We mustn’t wake other people, or do anything that felt unnatural, but just follow our feelings: if I want to go to sleep, I go to sleep; if I want to eat, I eat. There was always at least one person awake,” he said.
The team also monitored the rate at which time moved for them.
Instead of a typical 24-hour day cycle, they ran on cycles of 32 hours, so even though the explorers spent 40 days inside the cave, Clot said it felt more like 29.
Once he left the cave, however, he admitted he found it hard to adjust back to the outside world with schedules and obligations.
But Clot wasn’t the first thrill-seeker to set up home in a cold, damp cave.
A man nicknamed the “Professor of Adventure” turned a cave into his tiny home after tiring of bust city life.
Millican Dalton (1867-1947) led a bizarre life in the Lake District cave for nearly 30 years.
And a homeless man carved himself a cave and lives on just £400 a year but claimed a major flaw means most people can’t hack it.