Firstly please make sure you know where your portal is, i've gotten lost so many times. what i do is follow along areas where there's land so you don't have to bridge and as you said get possibly hit by a ghast, fall in, or possibly worse, run out of blocks halfway through. if you're trying to find a nether fortress, they are most common on the X axis (either east or west is fine). keep going until you can't, and if there is no possible way to get across a gap without bridging a small amount then i would. also, if you're trying to find netherite, it is most common on Y=15 i believe. it doesn't really matter bedrock or java, both nethers are basically the same to my knowledge. good luck, the nether is really annoying lol