I appreciate you are operating in remote areas (presuming your profile is correct) but at the very least you should know what you are risking in terms of your personal liability / career. Maybe your company was quite happy that you got the bird back at your own risk, but if things had gone wrong I doubt they would have been so supportive.
I do operate bordering the amazon and many times over dense forest, my route back could be over a calm river or carry on the flight flying over the forest... guess which one I picked
. If we stayed there we would have the SAR after us on sunrise. And the CEO was with me.
Satellite phone was dead... few hours to sunset...
I think it was a good decision.
If I were flying over dense populated I probably wouldn't take off unless I talked to maintenance personel.