A friend of mine worked as a doctor in the Tibetan refugee camp in Dharamsalla. At the end of his tour, he was allowed an audience with the Dalai Lama, as a gesture of thanks. The Dalai Lama asked if there was any way he could help my friend, to which my friend responded by whipping out his copy of Tintin in Tibet and asking him to autograph it. The Dalai Lama duly did so, adding a wee Buddhist prayer. And not only that, the Dalai Lama knew the book very well, and actually appears in it as a young man, and a lot of the other Tibetans in the book are based on real people. The Dalai Lama admired the story as a tale of a friend's unswerving, unflinching loyalty, linked by a very strong ethereal bond.
Madame Herge had also spent a lot of time attending and supporting the sanctuary, and that was how Herge himself got to know the culture of Tibet. A true story; I have seen the autographed book. And why else would this book have been translated into Tibetan?