Rather than going through a large process to reach hidden services without the Tor bundle, I'd suggest instead using Tor2Web or Onion.to.  Tor2Web is also open-source, but both are fairly reliable.

Example: DuckDuckGo
Tor only: http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion
http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.tor2web.org
http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion.to

best,
Griffin