The Escape of the Pāṇḍavas

As the Pāṇḍavas left Hastināpura, Vidura drew Yudhishthira aside and warned him in a hidden speech that only he could follow: that the enemy's fire cannot harm the one who prepares against it, that the forest blaze cannot reach the rat in its burrow or the porcupine in the earth, that a wise man finds his way by the stars. Yudhishthira understood, and at Vāraṇāvata he kept his brothers watchful, and confirmed that the palace reeked of lac and fat and butter.

Soon a miner came secretly from Vidura, with the passcode Vidura had used, and worked for weeks in secret to dig a tunnel running beneath the walls and the moat, out into the forest.

On the night Purochana meant to strike, the Pāṇḍavas struck first. They set fire to Purochana's own quarters and the palace's inflammable corners, and went down into the tunnel, and escaped into the dark just as the wax palace erupted into a tower of flame. They came out into the wild forest; and when Kuntī and the younger sons collapsed with exhaustion and terror, the mighty Bhīma carried them, his mother on his shoulders, the twins on his hips, Yudhishthira and Arjuna on his arms, and forced his way through the tangled woods.

They crossed the Ganges in a boat Vidura's boatman had ready, and went on disguised as humble brāhmaṇas toward Ekachakra. On the way they met the sage Vyāsa, who comforted the grieving Kuntī with a hard truth: that life is woven of good and evil together, that no good man is wholly free of sorrow nor any wrongdoer free of consequence; put on the garb of brāhmaṇas, he told them, and wait in Ekachakra for your time.